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CHEFS-D’OEUVRE 

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ROMAN CONTEMPORAIN 


ROMANCISTS 


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THE ROMANCISTS 


ALFRED DE MUSSET 

THE CONFESSION 
OF A CHILD OF THE CENTURY 









o\Yss\ & osssi \ ,omo$\ o\ sso 

wsvYxxms\ hYsso o$\\ \ \s^\\s& ofa. ^osYi s\o<\o mow 

Womi ^ Ysssss •Vsssi\v%xss\ooxs& ss issos t \teoWx ,Vs ws 
M^m «o \Yi\\ * * * omoz Wa izwo ss &\V$s 

Y^vh \ Ymo ossoto ^ wo 







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One day , on returning to her home , I saw a little 
room open that she called her oratory ; the only furniture 
in it, indeed , was a kneeling-chair and a small altar , 
with a cross and some flower-vases. * * * / fell on my 
knees on the stone and I wept bitterly. 









ROMAN CONTEMPORAIN 


/ 

ALFRED DE MUSSET 


THE CONFESSION OF A 

CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


TEN ETCHINGS 


PHILADELPHIA 

PRINTED ONLY FOR SUBSCRIBERS BY 
GEORGE BARRIE & SON 


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\ 


THIS EDITION OF THE 

CONFESSION OF A CHILD OF THE 

CENTURY 

HAS BEEN COMPLETELY TRANSLATED 

BY 


T. F. ROGERSON, M. A. 

THE ETCHINGS ARE BY 

EUGENE ABOT 

AND DRAWINGS BY 


PAUL-LEON JAZET 





























































































































































































































































































































































THE 

CONFESSION OF A CHILD 
OF THE CENTURY 




















V. 








* ^ • 

* s A 















PART FIRST 



PART FIRST 


I 


To write the history of one’s life, one must first have 
lived it ; and so it is not my own that I write. 

Having been afflicted, while yet young, with an 
abominable moral malady, I relate what happened to 
me during three years. If I were the only one sick, I 
would say nothing about it ; but as there are many 
others besides myself, who suffer from the same dis- 
ease, I write for them, while not too sure that they will 
pay any attention to it ; for, in case no one should take 
warning therefrom, I shall still have derived this benefit 
from my words, that I shall have cured myself more 
effectually, and, like the fox caught in the trap, I shall 
have gnawed my captive paw. 


7 


8 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


II 

During the wars of the Empire, whilst husbands and 
brothers were in Germany, uneasy mothers had given 
birth to an ardent, pale, nervous generation. Conceived 
between two battles, brought up in the colleges to the 
beating of drums, thousands of children looked at them- 
selves and one another with a gloomy eye, while trying 
their puny muscles. From time to time their blood- 
stained fathers appeared, raised them to their gold- 
bedizened breasts, then put them down again and 
remounted on horseback. 

One man only was then the life of Europe ; all other 
beings tried to fill their lungs with the air that he 
had breathed. Each year France made to that man 
a present of three hundred thousand young men; that 
was the tax paid to Caesar, and, if he had not that 
flock supporting him, he could not follow out his for- 
tune. It was the escort that he needed to traverse 
the world, and to go and perish in a little valley of a 
desert island, under a weeping willow. 

Never were there so many sleepless nights as in that 
man’s time; never was such a people of disconsolate 
mothers seen reclining on city ramparts; never was 
there such silence around those who spoke of death. 
And yet never was there so much joy, so much life, so 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


9 


much flourishing of war trumpets in every court. Never 
were there suns so cloudless as those that dried up all 
that blood. People said that God had made them for 
that man, and people called them his suns of Austerlitz. 
But he, indeed, made them himself with his ever thun- 
dering cannon, which left clouds only on the morrow of 
his battles. 

It was the air of that spotless sky, in which shone so 
much glory, in which glittered so much steel, that chil- 
dren then breathed. They knew well that they were 
destined for the hecatombs; but they regarded Murat 
as invulnerable, and people had seen the Emperor pass 
over a bridge amid the whizzing of so many balls that 
they knew not whether he could die. And even should 
one have to die, what was that? Death itself was then 
so beautiful, so grand, so magnificent in its smoking 
purple ! It so closely resembled hope, it mowed down 
such green ears, that it was as if it had become young, 
and that one no longer believed in old age. Every 
cradle in France was a buckler, and so, also, was every 
coffin ; verily there were no more old men, there were 
only corpses or demi-gods. 

Yet, one day, the immortal Emperor was to look from 
a hill at seven peoples cutting one another’s throats; as 
he did not yet know whether he was to be the master of 
the world or only of half of it, Azrael passed by the 
way, he grazed the tip of his wing and thrust him into 
the ocean. At the splash of his fall, the moribund 


IO 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


powers sat up in their beds of suffering, and, reaching 
out their hooked claws, all the royal spiders cut up 
Europe, and of Caesar’s purple, made for themselves a 
Harlequin’s garment. 

Just as a traveler, as long as he is on his way, rushes 
on night and day in rain and in sunshine, regardless of 
his vigils or of his dangers, but as soon as he has 
arrived in the bosom of his family and is seated before 
the fire, feels extremely weary and can scarcely drag 
himself to bed : so France, as Caesar’s widow, sud- 
denly felt her wound. She fell in a swoon, and slept 
so deep a sleep that her old kings, believing her dead, 
enveloped her in a white winding-sheet. The old 
gray-haired army retired exhausted from fatigue, and 
the fires were rekindled in sorrow in the deserted 
chateaus. 

Then those men of the empire, who had run so much 
and cut so many throats, embraced their emaciated 
wives and spoke of their first loves ; they looked at 
themselves in the fountains of their natal meadows, and 
they saw themselves so old, so mutilated, that they re- 
called their sons, so that one might close their eyes. 
They asked where they were ; the children left college, 
and, no longer seeing either sabres, or cuirasses, or 
infantry, or troopers, they, in their turn, asked where 
their fathers were. But they received for answer that 
the war was ended, that Caesar was dead, and that the 
portraits of Wellington and Bliicher were hung in the 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


ir 


antechambers of consulates and embassies, with these 
two words at the bottom : Salvatoribus mundi. 

Then a moody youth sat down on a world in ruins. 
All these children were drops of a boiling blood that 
had inundated the land ; they were born in the midst of 
war, for war. They had dreamt for fifteen years of the 
snows of Moscow and of the sun of the Pyramids. 
They had not gone out from their cities ; but they had 
been told that, through each barrier of these cities, one 
went to a European capital. They had a whole world 
in their heads ; they looked at earth, sky, streets, and 
roads; all that was void, and their parish bells alone 
resounded in the distance. 

Dim phantoms, clad in dark robes, slowly traversed 
the fields ; others knocked at the doors of the houses, 
and, as soon as these had been opened to them, they 
drew from their pockets large, well-worn parchments, 
with which they drove out the inhabitants. From all 
sides came men still trembling with the fear that had 
seized them on their departure, twenty years before. 
All claimed, disputed, and clamored ; people were aston- 
ished that a single death could bring so many crows. 

The king of France was on his throne, looking here 
and there lest he might spy a bee in his tapestry. 
Some extended their hats to him, and he gave them 
money ; others showed him a crucifix and he kissed it ; 
others were satisfied with calling great resounding 
names in his ear, and he replied that they should go 


12 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


into his great hall, that its echoes were sonorous ; still 
others showed him their old cloaks, as they had thor- 
oughly wiped the bees from them, and to those he gave 
a new garment. 

The children looked upon all that, ever thinking that 
Caesar’s shade was going to disembark at Cannes and 
breathe on these larvae ; but silence still continued, and 
people saw floating in the heavens only the paleness of 
the lilies. When the children spoke of glory, they were 
told : “ Become priests ; ’ ’ when they spoke of ambition : 
“ Become priests ! ” 

Meanwhile there mounted to the tribune a man who 
held in his hand a contract between king and people ; 
he began to say that glory was a noble thing, and the 
ambition of war also ; but that there was one thing yet 
more noble, and its name was Liberty. 

The children raised their heads and remembered 
their grandfathers, who had also spoken of it. They 
remembered having met, in the dark corners of their 
father’s house, mysterious marble busts with long hair 
and a Roman inscription; they remembered having 
seen of an evening, while sitting up together, their 
grandmothers shaking their heads and speaking of a 
river of blood far more terrible than that of the 
Emperor. In that word Liberty there was for them 
something that made their hearts beat, something at 
once like a distant and terrible reminiscence and also 
like a cherished hope, still more distant. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


13 


They bounded as they heard it; but on returning 
home they saw three baskets being carried to Clamart : 1 
they were three young men who had pronounced the 
word Liberty too loudly. 

A strange smile played upon their lips at this sad 
sight ; but other haranguers, mounting the tribune^ 
began to calculate publicly what ambition cost and that 
glory was very dear ; they pointed out the horror of war 
and spoke of the hecatombs as butcheries. And they 
spoke so much and so long that all human illusions, like 
trees in autumn, fell leaf by leaf around them, and that 
those who listened to them passed their hands over their 
foreheads like the fever-stricken when waking up. 

Some said : “ What caused the Emperor’s fall was 
that the people wanted no more of him; ” others: “The 
people wanted the king; no, liberty; no, reason; no, 
religion ; no, the English constitution ; no, absolutism; ” 
a last added : “ No, nothing of all that, but rest.” 

Three elements, then, shared the life that was at that 
time presented to the young ; behind them, a past for- 
ever destroyed, still quivering on its ruins, with all the 
fossils of the ages of absolutism ; before them, the dawn 
of an immense horizon, the first rays of the future ; 

and between these two worlds something like the 

ocean that separates the old continent from young 
America, something indescribably vague and wavering, 
a rolling sea full of wrecks, traversed from time to time 
by some distant white sail or by some ship puffing a 


14 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


heavy vapor — the present age, in a word, which sepa- 
rates the past from the future, which is neither the one 
nor the other, and which resembles both at the same 
time, and in which one knows not, at each step that one 
takes, whether one is walking on a seedling or on a ruin. 

Such was the chaos in which one had then to 
choose; that it was that presented itself to children 
full of strength and daring, to the sons of the Empire 
and to the grandsons of the Revolution. 

Now, of the past they wanted no more, for faith in 
nothing is assured ; the future they loved, but how ! 
as Pygmalion did Galatea : it was to them as a marble 
lover, and they waited for her to become animated, for 
the blood to color her veins. 

There remained to them, then, the present, the spirit 
of the age, an angel of the twilight that is neither night 
nor day ; they found it seated on a lime-sack filled with 
bones, enclosed in the mantle of the egoists, and shiver- 
ing from a terrible cold. The anguish of death entered 
their soul at the sight of this spectre half mummy, half 
foetus ; they approached it like the traveler to whom one 
shows at Strasburg the daughter of an old Comte de 
Sarvenden, embalmed in her bridal decking : that 
infantile skeleton makes one shudder, for its spare and 
livid hands wear the betrothal ring, and its head falls 
in dust amid orange blossoms. 

As on the approach of a storm there passes through the 
forest a terrible wind that makes all the trees shudder, 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


15 


to which succeeds a deep silence : so Napoleon had 
shaken everything as he passed over the world ; kings 
had felt their crowns vacillating, and, raising their 
hands to their heads, found only their hair, erect from 
fright. The Pope had journeyed three hundred leagues 
to bless him in God’s name and to place his diadem on 
him ; but Napoleon had taken it from his hands. Thus 
everything had trembled in that dismal forest of old 
Europe ; then silence had succeeded. 

It is said that when one meets a mad dog, if one has 
the courage to w r alk gravely, without turning back, and 
in a steady manner, the dog is satisfied with following 
you for a certain time growling between his teeth; 
while, if one allows a sign of terror to escape, if one 
walks too quickly, he throws himself on one and 
devours one; for, once the first bite is made, there is 
no way of escaping him. 

Now, in the history of Europe it has often happened 
that a sovereign has shown this sign of terror and that 
his people have devoured him; but, if one had done 
so, all had not done it at the same time, that is, a 
king had disappeared, but not the royal majesty. In 
the presence of Napoleon the royal majesty had made 
that gesture which loses all, not only majesty, but re- 
ligion, nobility, every divine and human power. 

Napoleon being dead, the divine and human powers 
were indeed restored in fact; but belief in them no 
longer existed. There is a terrible danger in knowing 


i6 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


what is possible, for the mind is ever advancing farther. 
It is one thing to say : “ That might be,” and another : 
“This has been,” which is the first bite by the dog. 

Napoleon, the despot, was the last glimmer of the 
lamp of despotism ; he destroyed and parodied kings, 
as Voltaire had done the sacred books. And after him 
a great noise was heard : it was the rock of St. Helena 
that had just fallen on the old world. At once appeared 
in the heavens the glacial star of reason, and its rays, like 
to those of the cold goddess of night, shedding light 
without heat, enveloped the world in a livid shroud. 

Hitherto, indeed, people had been seen who hated 
nobles, who declaimed against priests, who conspired 
against kings; people had indeed raised an outcry 
against abuses and prejudices ; but it was a great novelty 
to see the people smiling at it. If a noble, or a priest, 
or a sovereign passed, the peasants who had made war 
began to toss the head and say: “Ah ! we have seen that 
man in due time and place ; he had a different look. ’ ’ 
And when one spoke of the throne and of the altar, 
they replied: “They are four wooden staves; we have 
nailed and unnailed them.” And when one said to 
them: “People, you have returned from the errors 
that had led you astray ; you have called for your kings 
and your priests, ’ ’ they replied : “It was not we, it was 
those babblers.” And when one said to them : “ Peo- 
ple, forget the past, work and obey,” they settled them- 
selves again on their seats, and a dull clatter was heard. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


17 


It was a rusty and notched sword that had moved in a 
corner of the cabin. Then they immediately added: 
“Be at rest, at least; if they do not injure you, do 
not try to inflict injury.” Alas! they were satisfied 
with that. 

But the youth were not satisfied with this. Certain it 
is that there are in man two occult powers that fight to 
the death : the one, clear-sighted and cold, attaches 
itself to the reality, calculates it, weighs it, and judges 
the past ; the other is thirsty for the future and launches 
into the unknown. When passion carries man away, 
reason follows him weeping and warning him of the 
danger ; but as soon as man has stopped at the voice of 
reason, as soon as he has said to himself : “ True, I am 
a fool, whither am I going ? ’ ’ passion cries out to him : 
“And as for me, I, then, am going to die?” 

A feeling of inexpressible unrest then began to fer- 
ment in all young hearts. Condemned to repose by the 
sovereigns of the world, given up to vulgar pedantries 
of all sorts, to laziness and to lassitude, young men saw 
receding from them the foaming billows against which 
they had prepared their arms. All these oil-rubbed 
gladiators felt an unbearable wretchedness in the depths 
of their souls. The richest became libertines ; those of 
moderate fortune adopted a calling, and resigned them- 
selves either to the gown or to the sword ; the poorest 
heedlessly rushed into enthusiasm, into tall talk, into 
the frightful sea of aimless action. As human weakness 


i8 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


seeks association and as men are gregarious by nature, 
politics became mixed up with them. People went to 
fight with the body-guards on the steps of the legisla- 
tive chamber, people rushed to the theatrical perform- 
ance in which Talma wore a wig that made him look 
like Caesar, people crowded to the burial of a Liberal 
deputy. But of the members of both opposing parties 
there was not one who, on returning home, did not 
bitterly feel the void of his existence and the poverty 
of his hands. 

Just at the time when public life was so colorless and 
so mean, the private life of society took on a sombre 
and silent aspect ; the most rigid hypocrisy reigned in 
morals; English ideas being added to devotion, even 
gaiety had disappeared. Perhaps it was Providence 
that was already preparing its new ways, perhaps it was 
the courier-angel of future conditions of society who 
was already sowing in the hearts of women the germs 
of the human independence that they will one day 
claim. But it is certain that suddenly, a thing unheard 
of, in the Paris salons, the men pass down one side and 
the women the other ; and thus, the one clad in white 
like brides, the others in black like orphans, they began 
to gauge each other with their eyes. 

Let no one be mistaken about it : this black dress 
worn by the men of our time is a terrible symbol ; to 
get to that it was necessary for armor to fall piece by 
piece and embroidery flower by flower. It is human 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


*9 


reason that has overthrown all illusions; but it wears 
mourning itself, in order that it may be consoled. 

The manners of students and artists, those manners so 
free, so fine, so full of youth, felt the universal change. 
Men, by separating from women, had whispered a word 
that mortally wounds, — contempt. They had flung 
themselves into wine and into the society of courtesans. 
Students and artists also flung themselves therein : love 
was treated like glory and religion ; it was an old illm 
sion. People went, then, to places of ill-repute; the 
grisette, that class so dreamy, so romantic, and of a 
love so tender and so sweet, saw herself abandoned 
to the shop counters. She was poor, and she was no 
longer loved; she wanted to have dresses and hats, 
she sold herself. O misery ! the young man who 
should have loved her, whom she would have loved 
herself; he who formerly brought her to the woods 
of Verrieres and of Romainville, to dances on the 
grass, to suppers under the leafy shade; he who came 
to chat at evening under the lamp, at the farther 
end of the shop, during the long winter evening 
vigils; he who shared with her her morsel of bread 
steeped in the sweat of her brow, and her sublime 
and poor love; he, that same man, after having for- 
saken her, found her again some evening on an orgie 
in the inner recesses of a brothel, pale and dull, for- 
ever lost, with hunger on her lips and prostitution in 
her heart ! 


20 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


Now, about that time two poets, the two finest gen- 
iuses of the age following that of Napoleon, had just 
devoted their lives to collecting all the elements of 
anguish and sorrow scattered through the universe. 
Goethe, the patriarch of a new literature, after having 
depicted in Werther the passion that leads to suicide, 
had traced in his Faust the darkest human figure that 
ever represented evil and misfortune. His writings 
then began to pass from Germany into France. From 
the seclusion of his study, surrounded by paintings and 
statues, rich, happy, and peaceful, he looked on with a 
paternal smile at his work of darkness coming to us. 
Byron answered him with an exclamation of sorrow 
that made Greece bound, and suspended Manfred over 
the abyss, as if nothingness had been the solution of 
the hideous riddle that enveloped him. 

Pardon me, O great poets, who » are now but mere 
ashes resting underground ! pardon me ! you are demi- 
gods, and I am only a suffering child. But in writing 
all this, I cannot help cursing you. Why did you not 
sing the perfume of the flowers, the voices of nature, 
hope, and love, the vine and the sun, azure and beauty ? 
No doubt you were acquainted with life, and no doubt 
you had suffered, and the world crumbled around you, 
and you wept over its ruins, and you despaired ; and 
your mistresses had betrayed, and your friends calumni- 
ated, and your fellow-countrymen slighted you ; and you 
had a void in your heart, death in your eyes, and you 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


21 


were of the colossi of sorrow. But tell me, you, noble 
Goethe, was there no more consoling voice in the relig- 
ious murmur of your old German forests? You to 
whom beautiful poesy was the sister of science, could 
these not of their two selves find in immortal nature a 
plant salutary to the heart of their favorite? You who 
were a pantheist, an antique poet of Greece, a lover of 
sacred forms, could you not put a little honey in those 
fine vases that you knew how to make, you who had 
only to smile and to let the bees come upon your lips ? 
And you, and you, Byron, did you not have near Ra- 
venna, under your Italian orange-trees, under your 
beautiful Venetian sky, near your dear Adriatic, did 
you not have your dearly beloved? O God, I who 
speak to you, and who am only a weak child, I have 
perhaps known evils that you have not suffered, and 
yet I believe in hope, and yet I bless God. 

When English and German ideas thus passed over 
our heads, it was as a gloomy and silent disgust, followed 
by a terrible convulsion. For to formulate general ideas 
is to change saltpetre into gunpowder, and the Homeric 
brain of the great Goethe had sucked, alembic-like, all 
the juices from the forbidden fruit. Those who did not 
read him, then believed that they knew nothing. Poor 
creatures ! the explosion carried them away like grains 
of dust into the abyss of universal doubt. 

It was like a denying of all things of heaven and of 
earth, which one may call disenchantment, or, if one 


22 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


wish, despair; as if humanity in lethargy had been 
thought dead by those who tried its pulse. Just like 
that soldier of whom one asked of old: “In what do 
you believe ?” and who first answered: “In myself;” 
so the youth of France, hearing this question, first 
replied: “In nothing.” 

From that time there were formed, as it were, two 
camps : on the one side exalted, suffering minds, all the 
expansive souls that need the infinite, bent their heads 
weeping; they enveloped themselves in sickly dreams, 
and one no longer saw but frail reeds on an ocean of 
bitterness. On the other side the men of flesh remained 
erect, inflexible, amid positive enjoyments, and they 
took no other care than to count the money that they 
had. It was only a sob and a burst of laughter, the one 
coming from the soul, the other from the body. 

This, then, is what the soul said : 

“Alas! alas! religion is going; the clouds of heaven 
fall in rain ; we no longer have either hope or expecta- 
tion, not even two little bits of black wood in the form 
of a cross before which to extend our hands. The star 
of the future is hardly rising ; it cannot pass the hori- 
zon ; it remains enveloped in clouds, and, like the sun 
in winter, its disk there appears of a blood-red, which it 
has kept since ’93. There is no more love, there is no 
more glory. What a thick night on the earth ! And 
we shall be dead when day shall break.” 

This, then, is what the body said : 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


23 


“Man is here below to make use of his senses; he 
has more or fewer pieces of white metal, with which 
he is entitled to more or less esteem. To eat, to drink, 
and to sleep, is to live ! As for the bonds that exist be- 
tween men, friendship consists in loaning money ; but it 
is rare to have a friend whom one can love enough for 
that. Relationship serves for inheritances; love is an 
exercise of the body ; the only intellectual enjoyment is 
vanity. ’ ’ 

Like to the Asiatic plague exhaled from the vapors of 
the Ganges, terrible despair was stalking over the earth 
with giant strides. Already Chateaubriand, a prince of 
poesy, enveloping the horrible idol with his pilgrim’s 
cloak, had placed it on a marble altar, amid the per- 
fumes of the sacred censers. Already, full of a hence- 
forth useless strength, the children of the age were 
stiffening their lazy hands and were drinking the pois- 
oned brewing from their sterile cup. Everything was 
already spoiling, when the jackals emerged from earth. 
A cadaverous and infected literature, which had only 
form, but a hideous form, began to bedew all the mon- 
sters of nature with a fetid blood. 

Who will ever dare to relate what took place then in 
the colleges? Men doubted everything: young men 
denied everything. Poets sang despair: young men 
left the schools with the brow serene, the visage fresh 
and ruddy, and blasphemy in their mouths. Moreover, 
the French character, by nature gay and open, still 


24 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


predominating, the brains were easily filled with English 
and German ideas ; but the hearts, too light to struggle 
and to suffer, withered like broken flowers. Thus the 
principle of death descended coldly and without shock 
from the head to the entrails. Instead of possessing 
the enthusiasm of evil, we had only the abnegation 
of good; instead of despair, insensibility. Children 
of fifteen, seated carelessly under flowering shrubs, 
for pastime carried on conversations that would have 
made the insensible groves of Versailles shudder with 
horror. The communion of Christ, the Host, that 
eternal symbol of celestial love, served to seal letters; 
children spat out God’s bread. 

Happy they who escaped those times ! Happy they 
who passed over the abyss gazing on Heaven ! There 
were some of them, no doubt, and they will pity us. 

It is unfortunately true that there is in blasphemy 
a great loss of force which comforts the heart that is 
too full. When an atheist, taking out his watch, gave 
a quarter of an hour to God to thunder against Him, 
it is certain that it was a quarter of an hour’s wrath 
and atrocious enjoyment that he took to himself. It 
was the paroxysm of despair, a nameless appeal to 
all the celestial powers; it was a poor and miserable 
creature turning on the foot that is crushing him; 
it was a loud cry of pain. And who knows? in the 
eyes of Him who sees everything it was perhaps a 
prayer. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


25 


Thus young men found a use for inactive force in a 
liking for despair. Mocking glory, religion, love, every- 
thing in the world, is a great consolation to those who 
know not what to do ; in that they ridicule themselves 
and justify themselves while repeating the lesson. And 
then it is sweet to believe one’s self unhappy, when one 
is only exhausted and tired. Debauchery, besides, the 
first conclusion from the principles of death, is a terrible 
millstone when it is a question of becoming enervated. 

So the rich said to themselves: “There is nothing 
true but riches, all the rest is a dream ; let us enjoy and 
die.” Those of moderate fortune said: “There is 
nothing true but forgetfulness, all the rest is a dream ; 
let us forget and die.” And the poor said : “There is 
nothing true but misfortune, all the rest is a dream ; let 
us blaspheme and die.” 

Is this too black ? is it exaggerated ? What do you 
think of it? Am I a misanthrope? Let me make a 
reflection. 

In reading the history of the fall of the Roman Em- 
pire, it is impossible not to take notice of the evil that 
the Christians, so admirable in the desert, did to the 
State as soon as they had the power. “When,” says 
Montesquieu, “I think of the profound ignorance into 
which the Greek clergy plunged the laity, I cannot help 
comparing them to those Scythians of whom Herodotus 
speaks, who put out the eyes of their slaves, so that 
nothing could distract them and keep them from their 


26 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


work. No affair of State, no peace, no war, no truce, 
no negotiation, no marriage, was attended to except by 
the ministry of the monks. One would not believe 
what evil resulted therefrom. > ; 

Montesquieu might have added . Christianity de- 
stroyed the emperors, but it saved the peoples. It 
opened to the barbarians the palaces of Constantinople, 
but it opened the cabin doors to the consoling angels 
of Christ. It was a question, indeed, of the great ones 
of the earth ! and how interesting the final death- 
rattles of an empire corrupted even to the very marrow 
of its bones, the sombre galvanism by means of which 
tyranny’s skeleton was still agitating over the tomb of 
Heliogabalus and of Caracalla ! What a fine thing to 
preserve was the mummy of Rome embalmed with the 
perfumes of Nero, swathed with the shroud of Tiberius ! 
It was a question, ye men of politics, of going in search 
of the poor and of telling them to be at ease ; it was a 
question of letting worms and moles gnaw the monu- 
ments of shame, but yet of taking from the flanks of 
the mummy a virgin as beautiful as the Mother of the 
Redeemer, — Hope, the friend of the oppressed. 

That is what Christianity did ; and now, for so many 
years past, what have those done who have destroyed it ? 
They have seen that the poor have consented to be 
oppressed by the rich, the weak by the strong, for this 
reason that they said to themselves: “The rich and 
the strong will oppress me on earth; but when they 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


27 


wish to enter into Paradise, I will be at the gate and 
I will accuse them before God’s tribunal.” Thus, alas ! 
they kept their patience. 

Christ’s antagonists, then, have said to the poor : 
“You practise patience until the day of justice: there 
is no justice; you await eternal life in order to claim 
vengeance there : there is no eternal life ; you amass 
your tears and those of your family, the cries of your 
children and the sobs of your wife so as to carry them 
to God’s feet in the hour of death : there is no God.” 

Then it is certain that the poor dried their tears, that 
they told their wives to be silent, their children to come 
with them, and that they arrayed themselves on the 
glebe with the strength of a bull. They said to the 
rich : “You who oppress us are only a man ; ” and to 
the priest : “You who have consoled us have lied about 
it.” That was exactly what Christ’s antagonists wanted. 
Perhaps they believed they were thus bringing happi- 
ness to men, by sending the poor to the conquest of 
liberty. 

But if the poor, having clearly understood for once 
that the priests are deceiving them, that the rich are 
robbing them, that all men have the same rights, that 
all kinds of property are of this world, and that its 
wretchedness is impious; if the poor man, believing in 
himself and his two arms as his entire creed, one fine 
day said to himself: “War on the rich ! mine also be 
enjoyment here below, since there is none elsewhere ! 


28 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


mine be the earth, since heaven is void ! mine and 
everybody’s, since all are equal ! ” O sublime reasoners 
who have led him to that, what will you say to him if 
he be vanquished ? 

No doubt you are philanthropists, no doubt you are 
right as to the future, and the day will come when you 
will be blessed ; but not yet, in truth, can we bless you. 
When of old the oppressor said : “ Mine is the earth ! ” 
“Mine is heaven!” the oppressed answered. What 
answer will he give now ? 

The entire malady of the present age comes from two 
causes: the nation that has passed through ’93 and 
through 1814 carries two wounds in its heart. All that 
was is no more ; all that will be is not yet. Look not 
elsewhere for the secret of our evils. 

Take a man whose house is falling to ruin ; he has 
demolished it to build a new one. The rubbish lies on 
his field, and he awaits new stones for his new edifice. 
At the moment when you see him ready to trim his 
rough stones and to make his mortar, pick in hand, 
sleeves rolled back, they come to tell him that the stones 
are lacking, and to advise him to clean the old ones so 
as to make use of them. What would you have him do, 
him who does not want ruins to make a nest for his 
brood? The quarry, however, is deep, the implements 
too weak to take the stones out of it. “Wait,” they 
tell him, “they will be taken out by degrees; hope, 
work, advance, recede.” What is he not told! And 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


2 9 


during that time, that man, no longer having his old 
house and not yet his new house, knows not how to 
protect himself against the rains nor how to prepare his 
evening repast, nor where to work, nor where to rest, 
nor where to live, nor where to die ; and his children 
are new-born. 

Either I am strangely deceived-; or we resemble that 
man. O peoples of the future ages ! when, on a warm 
summer’s day, you will be bent over your ploughs in 
the green fields of the fatherland ; when, under a pure 
and spotless sun, you will see the earth, your fruitful 
mother, smile in her morning gown at the workman, her 
well-beloved child ; when, wiping from your tranquil 
brows the holy baptism of perspiration, you will direct 
your gaze on your immense horizon, where there will 
be no stalk higher than another in the human harvest, 
but only bluebottles and daisies amid the ripening 
wheat ; O free men ! when then you will thank God 
for having been born for this harvest, think of us who 
will have passed, say that we have bought very dearly 
the rest that you will enjoy; pity us more than all 
your fathers ; for we have many evils that made them 
worthy of compassion, and we have lost that which 
consoled them. 


30 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


III 


I have to relate on what occasion I was first seized 
with the malady of the times. 

I was at table, at a great supper, after a masquerade. 
Around me, my friends in rich costumes ; on all sides, 
young men and women, all sparkling with beauty and 
joy ; to right and to left, rich viands, flasks, lustres, 
flowers ; over my head, a clamorous orchestra, and in 
front of me, my mistress, a superb creature whom I 
idolized. 

I was then nineteen ; I had experienced no misfor- 
tune or malady ; I was of a character at the same time 
haughty and candid, with every hope and an overflow- 
ing heart. The vapors of wine were fermenting in my 
veins ; it was one of those moments of intoxication when 
all that one sees, all that one hears, speaks to one of the 
well -beloved. All nature then seemed as a precious 
stone of a thousand facets, on which the mysterious 
name is engraved. One would willingly embrace all 
those whom one sees smile, and one feels one’s self the 
brother of all that exists. My mistress had made an 
appointment with me for the night, and I was slowly 
carrying my glass to my lips while looking at her. 

As I was turning round to get a plate, my fork fell. 
I stooped to pick it up, and not finding it at first, I 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


31 


raised the table-cloth to see where it had rolled. Un- 
der the table I then perceived my mistress’s foot, placed 
on that of a young man seated at her side ; their legs 
were crossed and interlaced, and they pressed them 
gently from time to time. 

I raised myself, perfectly calm, asked for another fork, 
and continued the supper. My mistress and her neigh- 
bor were, on their part, very quiet also, hardly speak- 
ing and not looking at each other. The young man 
had his elbows on the table, and was indulging in 
pleasantry with another woman, who was showing him 
her collar and her bracelets. My mistress was unmoved, 
her eyes fixed and steeped in languor. I kept looking 
at both of them as long as the repast lasted, and I saw 
neither in their gestures nor on their countenances any- 
thing that could betray them. At the end, when we 
were at dessert, I made my napkin glide to the floor, 
and, having stooped anew, I found them again in the 
same position, closely linked to each other. 

I had promised my mistress to escort her home that 
evening. She was a widow, and consequently quite 
free, because of an old relative who accompanied her 
and served her as chaperon. As I was crossing the 
peristyle, she called me. “Come, Octave,” she said to 
me, “let us go, here I am.” I began to laugh, and 
left without answering. After going a few steps, I sat 
down on a ledge. I know not of what I was thinking ; 
I was as if besotted and become an idiot by reason of 


3 2 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


the infidelity of that woman of whom I had never been 
jealous and about whom I had never entertained a sus- 
picion. What I had just seen left no doubt in me, I 
remained as if stunned ty a blow from a club, and re- 
call nothing of what took place in me during the time 
that I remained on that ledge, except that, looking 
mechanically at the sky and seeing a star shoot, I 
saluted that fugitive glimmer, in which poets see a 
world destroyed, and gravely took off my hat to it. 

I returned home quite tranquilly, experiencing noth- 
ing, feeling nothing, and as if deprived of reflection. I 
began to undress, and went to bed ; but scarcely had I 
laid my head on the pillow, when the spirit of vengeance 
seized me with such force that I fixed myself suddenly 
against the wall, as if all the muscles of my body had 
become wood. I got out of my bed crying, my arms 
extended, able to walk only on my heels, so cramped 
were the nerves of my toes. Thus I passed nearly an 
hour, completely mad, and as stiff as a skeleton. It 
was the first attack of wrath that I experienced. 

The man whom I had taken by surprise with my mis- 
tress was one of my most intimate friends. I went to 
his house next day, accompanied by a young lawyer 
named Desgenais ; we took pistols, another witness, and 
went to the Bois de Vincennes. During the entire 
journey I avoided speaking to my adversary or even 
approaching him ; I thus resisted the desire that I had 
to strike him or insult him, violence of such sort being 


$3 art ,-fFirst <E1)aptcr 


/ was at table , at a great supper , after a masquerade . 
Around me , wy friends in rich costumes ; on all sides , 
young men and women, all sparkling with beauty and 
joy ; to right and to left, rich viands, flasks, lustres, 
flowers ; over my head a clamorous orchestra, and in front 
of me, my mistress, a superb creature whom I idolized. 






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CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


33 


always hideous or useless, from the moment that the law 
tolerates the combat in regular form. But I could not 
help keeping my eyes fixed on him. He was one of my 
childhood’s comrades, and there had been between us 
a perpetual exchange of services for many years past. 
He was perfectly well aware of my love for my mistress, 
and had even on several occasions given me clearly to 
understand that bonds of this sort were sacred to a 
friend, and that he would be incapable of seeking to 
supplant me, even should he love the same woman as 
I did. In fine, I had the fullest confidence in him, 
and I had never perhaps pressed the hand of a human 
creature more cordially than his. 

I looked curiously, eagerly, at that man whom I had 
heard speak of friendship like a hero of antiquity, and 
whom I had just seen caressing my mistress. It was the 
first time in my life that I saw a monster ; I measured 
him with a haggard eye to observe how he was made. 
Him whom I had known at the age of ten, with whom 
I had lived day by day in most perfect and closest 
friendship, it seemed to me that I had never seen him. 
Here I will make use of a comparison. 

There is a Spanish play, known to everybody, in which 
a stone statue comes to sup with a debauchee, sent by 
celestial justice. The debauchee affects good behavior 
and strives to seem indifferent ; but the statue demands 
his hand, and, as soon as he has given it, the man feels 
seized with a mortal chill and falls in convulsions. 


34 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


Now, every time that, during my life, it has happened 
to me to have believed confidently for a long time, 
either in a friend or in a mistress, and to discover all of 
a sudden that I was deceived, I have been able to de- 
scribe the effect that this discovery produced on me 
only by comparing it with the handshaking of the 
statue. It is verily the impression of marble, as if the 
reality, in all its mortal coldness, froze me with a kiss ; 
it is the touch of the man of stone. Alas ! the terrible 
guest has knocked more than once at my door; more 
than once have we supped together. 

Yet, the arrangements made, my adversary and my- 
self put ourselves in line, advancing slowly toward each 
other. He fired first and wounded me in the right arm. 
I at once took my pistol in my other hand ; but I could 
not raise it, strength failing me, and I fell on one knee. 

Then I saw my enemy advancing precipitately, with a 
disturbed air and a very pale countenance. My seconds 
ran at the same time, seeing that I was wounded ; but 
he brushed them aside and took the hand of my maimed 
arm. He had his teeth clenched and could not speak ; 
I saw his anguish. He was suffering from the most 
frightful evil that man can feel. “ Go away ! ” I called 

to him, “ and dry yourself on the skirts of ! ” He 

was suffocating, and so was I. 

They put me in a hackney coach, where I found a 
physician. The wound was discovered not to be dan- 
gerous, as the ball had not touched the bone ; but I was 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


35 


in such a state of excitement that it was impossible to 
soothe me on the spot. Just as the hack was starting, 
I saw a trembling hand at the door : it was my adver- 
sary again returning. I shook my head as my only 
response; I was in such a rage that in vain would I 
have made an effort to pardon him, though I felt satis- 
fied that his repentance was sincere. 

Having arrived home, the blood that was flowing 
from my arm soothed me considerably; for weakness 
delivered me of my wrath, which did me more harm 
than my wound. I lay down with delight, and I be- 
lieve that I have never drunk anything more enjoyable 
than the first glass of water that they gave me. 

Having taken to my bed, fever seized me. It was 
then that I began to shed tears. What I could not con- 
ceive was not that my mistress had ceased to love me, 
but it was that she had deceived me. I did not under- 
stand by what reason a woman, who is compelled neither 
by duty nor by interest, could lie to one man when she 
is loving another. Twenty times a day did I ask Des- 
genais how that was possible. “If I were her hus- 
band,” I said, “or if I were paying her, I could con- 
ceive that she would deceive me; but why, if she no 
longer loved me, not tell me so ? why deceive me ?’ ’ I 
did not conceive that one could lie in love ; I was a 
child then, and I confess that I do not understand 
it yet. Every time that I have fallen in love with a 
woman I have told her so, and every time that I have 


36 THE CONFESSION OF A 

ceased to love a woman I have told her so likewise, 
with the same sincerity, having always thought that, in 
matters of this sort, we can do nothing by our will, and 
that there is no crime except in lying. 

To everything that I said, Desgenais replied : “She is 
a wretch; promise me that you will not see her again.” 
I swore it to him solemnly. He advised me, besides, 
not to write to her, even to reproach her, and, if she 
wrote to me, not to answer. I promised him all that, 
almost astonished that he asked me, and indignant that 
he could suppose the contrary. 

Yet the first thing that I did, as soon as I was able to 
get up and leave my room, was to rush to my mistress. 
I found her alone, seated on a chair in a corner of her 
room, with downcast countenance and in the greatest 
disorder. I overwhelmed her with the most violent 
reproaches; I was intoxicated with despair. I cried 
loud enough to make the whole house resound, and at 
the same time my tears so violently interrupted my 
words that I fell on the bed to give them free vent. 
“Ah! faithless one! ah! wretch!” I said to her, 
weeping, “you know that I shall die of it, does that 
give you pleasure ? what have I done to you ? ’ ’ 

She threw herself on my neck, told me that she had 
been enticed, led away ; that my rival had intoxicated 
her at that fatal supper, but that she had never been his ; 
that she had given herself up in a moment of forgetful- 
ness ; that she had committed a fault, but not a crime ; 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


37 


in short, that she saw clearly all the evil that she had 
done to me ; but that, if I did not pardon her, she also 
would die of it. All the tears that sincere repentance 
has, all the eloquence possessed by grief, she exhausted 
to console me ; pale and distracted, her dress open, her 
hair flowing over her shoulders, on her knees in the 
middle of the room, never had I seen her so beautiful, 
and I shuddered with horror whilst all my feelings were 
aroused at that spectacle. 

I left there broken, no longer able to see and hardly 
able to hold myself up. I wanted never to see her 
again; but, after a quarter of an hour I returned. I 
know not what desperate strength drove me thither ; I 
had, as it were, a dull desire to possess her once more, to 
drink from her magnificent body all those bitter tears, 
and to kill both of us after. In fine, I abhorred her 
and I idolized her ; I felt that her love was my destruc- 
tion, but that to live without her was impossible. I 
went up to her apartments like a flash of lightning ; I 
did not speak to any domestic, I entered direct, know- 
ing the house, and I pushed open the door of her room. 

I found her seated before her toilet, motionless and 
covered with precious stones. Her chambermaid was 
dressing her hair ; she held in her hand a piece of red 
crape which she was passing lightly over her cheeks. I 
thought I was in a dream ; it seemed to me impossible 
that there was that same woman whom I had just seen, 
a quarter of an hour ago, bathed in grief and stretched 


38 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


on the floor ; I remained like a statue. She, hearing 
her door open, turned her head, smiling : “ Is it you ? ” 
she said. She was going to the ball, and was awaiting 
my rival, who was to escort her thither. She recog- 
nized me, pressed her lips together, and knit her brow. 

I took a step as if to leave. I looked at the nape of 
her slender neck, sleek and perfumed, where her hair 
was knotted, and on which sparkled a diamond comb ; 
that nape, the seat of the vital force, was blacker than 
hell ; two shining tresses were knotted there, and slight 
stalks of silver were balanced above. Her shoulders 
and her neck, whiter than milk, relieved the erect and 
luxuriant down. There was in that uplifted hair a 
something indescribably beautiful, yet immodest, that 
seemed to taunt me with the disorder in which I had 
seen her an instant before. I advanced all of a sudden 
and struck that nape with the back of my clenched 
hand. My mistress did not utter a cry : she fell on her 
hands, after which I left precipitately. 

Having returned home, the fever again seized me 
with such violence that I was obliged to go back to bed. 
My wound was opened afresh, and I suffered much from 
it. Desgenais came to see me ; I related to him all that 
had happened. He listened to me in deep silence, then 
walked for some time through the room like a man with- 
out resolve. At last he stopped in front of me and burst 
into a fit of laughter: “Is she your first mistress?” he 
said to me. “No,” I said to him, “she is the last.” 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


39 


Toward the middle of the night, as I was sleeping a 
restless sleep, I seemed in a dream to hear a deep sigh. 
I opened my eyes and saw my mistress standing near 
my bed, her arms crossed, like a spectre. I was unable 
to restrain a cry of terror, believing in an apparition 
emanating from my sick brain. I threw myself out of 
bed and fled to the other end of the room ; but she 
came to me: “It is I,” she said; and, seizing me 
round the waist, she drew me to her. “What do you 
want of me ? ” I exclaimed ; “ release me ! I am capa- 
ble of killing you on the spot ! ’ ’ 

“Well, kill me!” she said. “I have betrayed you, 
I have lied to you, I am a wretch and miserable ; but I 
love you, and I cannot do without you.” 

I looked at her ; how beautiful she was ! Her whole 
body shook; her eyes, lost in love, shed torrents of 
lust; her throat was bare, her lips were burning. I 
took her up in my arms. “Be it so,” I said to her, 
“but before God who sees us, by my father’s soul, I 
swear to you that I will kill you on the spot and myself 
also.” I took up a table-knife that was on my mantel- 
piece and put it under the pillow. 

“Come; Octave,” she said to me smiling and em- 
bracing me, “do nothing foolish. Come, my boy; all 
these horrors make you sick ; you are feverish. Give 
me that knife.” 

I saw that she wanted to take it. “ Listen to me,” I 
then said to her; “ I know not who you are and what 


40 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


comedy you are playing ; but, as for me, I do not play 
it. I have loved you as much as a man can love on 
earth, and, to my misfortune and my death, know that 
I still love you to distraction. You come to tell me 
that you love me also ; I am gratified ; but, by all that 
is sacred in the world, if I am your lover to-night, 
another will not be so to-morrow. Before God, before 
God,” I repeated, “ I will not take you back as mistress, 
for I hate you as much as I love you. Before God, if 
you want me, I will kill you to-morrow morning. ’ ’ By 
speaking thus I threw myself into a complete delirium. 
She cast her cloak around her shoulders and, running 
away, left me. 

When Desgenais knew this history, he said to me : 
“ Why did you not want her? you are very fastidious; 
she. is a pretty woman.” 

“ Are you joking?” I said to him. “ Do you think 
that such a woman could be my mistress ? do you think 
that I would ever consent to share with another man ? 
do you consider that she herself acknowledges that 
another possesses her, and would you have me forget 
that I love her, in order to possess her also ? If such 
are your loves, you excite my pity. ’ ’ 

Desgenais replied that he loved only the girls, and 
that he did not examine so closely. “My dear Oc- 
tave,” he added, “you are very young; you would like 
to have quite a number of things, fine things too, but 
such as do not exist. You believe in a singular sort of 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


41 


love ; perhaps you are capable of it ; I believe so, but 
do not wish it for you. You will have other mistresses, 
my friend, and you will regret some future day what 
happened to you this night. When this woman came 
to see you, it is certain that she loved you; she does 
not love you perhaps at the present moment, she is 
perhaps in another’s arms; but she loved you that night 
in this room; and of what importance is the rest to 
you? You had a fine night there, and you will regret 
it, be sure of that, for she will not come back again. 
A woman pardons everything, except that one does 
not want her. It must have been that her love for 
you was terrible, for her to come to see you, knowing 
and avowing herself guilty, perhaps suspecting that she 
would be refused. Believe me, you will regret such a 
night, for I tell you that you will hardly have another 
such. ’ ’ 

There was in all that Desgenais said, an air of con- 
viction so simple and so profound, so despairing a tran- 
quillity of experience, that I shuddered as I listened to 
him. Whilst he was speaking, I felt a violent tempta- 
tion to go again to my mistress’s, or to write to her to 
get her to come. I was unable to rise ; that saved me 
from the shame of exposing myself anew to finding her 
either waiting for my rival or closeted with him. But I 
still had the means of writing to her; I asked myself 
in spite of myself, in case I should write to her, whether 
she would come. 


42 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


When Desgenais had left, I felt so terrible an agita- 
tion that I resolved to put an end to it, in some way or 
other. After a terrible struggle, horror at last over- 
came love. I wrote to my mistress that I would never 
see her again, and that I entreated her not to come back 
any more, if she did not want to expose herself to 
being refused at my door. I rang violently, I ordered 
that my letter be taken in the greatest possible haste. 
Scarcely had my domestic shut the door when I called 
him back. He did not hear me; I dared not call him 
back a second time ; and, putting both my hands over 
my face, I remained buried in the deepest despair. 


iv 


Next day, at sunrise, the first thought that came to 
me was to ask myself: “ What shall I do now?” 

I had no calling, no occupation. I had studied 
medicine and law, without being able to decide on 
adopting either of these careers; I had worked six 
months at a banker’s with such indifferent results that 
I had been obliged to hand in my resignation so as 
not to be dismissed. I had made good, but superficial 
studies, having a memory that needs exercise, and that 
forgets as easily as it learns. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


43 


My only treasure, after love, was independence. 
Since my adolescence I had devoted it to a fierce 
worship, and I had, so to speak, consecrated it in my 
heart. It was on a certain day that my father, think- 
ing already of my future, had spoken to me of several 
careers, one of which he desired me to choose. I was 
resting on my elbow at my window, and I was looking 
at a slender and solitary poplar that was swaying to and 
fro in the garden. I was reflecting on all these differ- 
ent callings, and was deliberating about taking up one 
of them. I puzzled my brains in considering them 
one by one ; after which, feeling no taste for either, I 
allowed my thoughts to wander. It seemed to me all 
of a sudden that I felt the earth move, and that the 
silent and invisible force that draws it through space 
was making itself felt to my senses; I saw it mount into 
the heavens ; it seemed to me that I was, as it were, on 
a ship ; the poplar that I had before my eyes appeared 
to me like a mast of a vessel ; I arose, extending my 
arms and exclaimed: “It is indeed a small matter to 
be a passenger of a day on this ship floating in the 
ether ; it is quite a small matter to be a man, a black 
spot on this ship ; I will be a man, but not a particular 
kind of man! ” 

Such was the first vow that, at the age of fourteen, I 
had pronounced in the face of nature, and since that 
time I had tried nothing but in obedience to my father, 
yet without ever being able to overcome my repugnance. 


44 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


I was free, then, not from sloth, but from will, loving, 
moreover, all that God has made and very little of what 
has been made by man. I had known of life only love, 
of the world only my mistress, and did not want to 
know anything more of them. And so, having fallen 
in love on leaving college, I had sincerely believed that 
it was for my whole life, and every other thought had 
disappeared. 

My existence was sedentary. I passed the day with 
my mistress ; my great pleasure was to escort her to the 
country during the fine days of summer and to lie down 
near her in the woods, on the grass or on the moss, the 
spectacle of nature in its splendor having always been 
to me the most powerful of aphrodisiacs. In winter, as 
she loved the world, we hunted up balls and masks, so 
that this leisurely life never ceased; and as I had 
thought only of her so long as she had been faithful 
to me, I found myself without a thought when she 
had betrayed me. 

To give an idea of the condition in which my mind 
then was, I cannot better compare it than to one of 
those apartments such as we see to-day, in which are 
found, gathered and confused, articles of furniture of all 
times and of all countries. Our age has no forms. We 
have not impressed the seal of our time either on our 
houses, or on our gardens, or on anything whatever. 
We meet in the street people who have the beard cut as 
in the time of Henri III., others who are shaven, others 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


45 


who have the hair arranged like that of the portrait of 
Raphael, others as of the time of Jesus Christ. And so 
the apartments of the rich are cabinets of curiosities : 
the antique, the Gothic, the taste of the Renaissance, 
that of Louis XIII., everything is pellmell. In fine, 
we have of all the ages, except our own, a thing that 
has never been seen in any other period. Eclecticism is 
our taste; we take all that we find, — this for its beauty, 
that for its suitableness, such another thing for its anti- 
quity, such another for its very ugliness; so that we 
live only in wreckage, as if the end of the world were 
at hand. 

Such was my mind ; I had read a great deal ; besides, 
I had learned to paint. I knew by heart a great num- 
ber of things, but nothing in order, so that I had my 
head at the same time empty and swollen, like a sponge. 
I became a lover of all the poets one after the other; 
but, being of a very impressionable nature, the last 
comer had always the gift of disgusting me with the 
rest. I had made of myself a great storehouse of ruins, 
until at last, being no longer thirsty by force of drink- 
ing the novel and the unknown, I found myself a ruin. 

Yet on this ruin there was something good still 
young: it was the hope of my heart, which was only 
that of a child. 

This hope, which nothing had tarnished or cor- 
rupted, and which love had exalted to excess, had 
suddenly received a mortal wound. My mistress’s 


4 6 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


perfidy had stricken it at the height of its flight, and, 
when I thought of it, I felt in my soul something 
that faltered convulsively, like a wounded bird that 
is in agony. 

Society, which does so much evil, resembles that 
serpent of the Indies whose home is the leaf of a 
plant which heals its bite; it almost always presents 
the remedy with the suffering that it has caused. A 
man, for example, who has his existence regulated, 
business at rising, visits at such an hour, work at such 
another, lover at such another, may without danger lose 
his mistress. His occupations and his thoughts are like 
those impassive soldiers ranged in battle on one and the 
same line: a shot carries off one, the neighbors close 
up, and he appears no more. 

I had not that resource from the time that I was 
alone : nature, my beloved mother, seemed to me on 
the contrary more vast and more void than ever. If I 
had been able entirely to forget my mistress, I should 
have been saved. How many people who do not need 
so much to heal them ! They are incapable of loving a 
faithless woman, and their conduct, in such a case, is 
admirable for its firmness. But is it thus that one loves 
at nineteen, at the time when, not knowing anything in 
the world, desiring everything, the young man feels at 
one and the same time the germ of all the passions? 
Of what does this age doubt? To right, to left, down 
there, on the horizon, everywhere, some voice calls 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


47 


him. All is desire, all is reverie. There is no reality 
that holds when the heart is young; there is no oak 
so knotty and so hard from which a dryad does not 
emerge ; and, if one had a hundred arms, one would 
not fear to open them in the void; one has only to 
clasp his mistress there, and the void is filled. 

As for me, I did not imagine that one did else than 
love ; and, when one spoke to me of another occu- 
pation, I made no answer. My passion for my mistress 
had been, as it were, savage, and my whole life felt 
from it indescribably monkish and fierce. I want to 
cite only one example. She had given me her portrait 
in miniature on a medallion ; I wore it on my heart, a 
thing done by many men ; but having one day found at 
a curiosity dealer’s an iron discipline, at the end of 
which was a plate bristling with points, I had had the 
medallion attached to the plate and wore it thus. Those 
nails, which entered my breast at each movement, 
caused me so strange a pleasure that I sometimes raised 
my hand to feel them more keenly. I know well that 
it is folly; love commits many others. 

Since that woman had betrayed me, I had removed 
the cruel medallion. I cannot say how sadly I detached 
the iron girdle from it, and what a sigh my heart heaved 
when it found itself delivered from it! “Ah! poor 
scars,” I said to myself, “you are, then, going to be 
effaced ? Ah ! my wound, my dear wound, what balm 
am I going to lay on you?” 


4 8 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


It was all very fine for me to hate that woman : she 
was, so to say, in the blood of my veins ; I cursed her, 
but I dreamt of her. What was I to do with that ? what 
was I to do with a dream? what reason to give for 
memories of flesh and blood? Lady Macbeth, having 
slain Duncan, says that the Ocean would not wash her 
hands ; it would not have washed my scars. I said to 
Desgenais: “What would you? when I fall asleep, her 
head is there on the pillow.” 

I had lived only in that woman ; to doubt her was to 
doubt everything ; to curse her, to deny everything ; to 
lose her, to destroy everything. I did not go out any 
more ; the world appeared to me as a people of mon- 
sters, of wild beasts and of crocodiles. To everything 
that people said to me to distract me I replied: “Yes, 
it is well said, and rest assured that I will do nothing 
about it.” 

I betook myself to the window and I said to myself: 
“She will come, I am sure of it; she is coming, she is 
turning around the corner; I feel her approaching. 
She cannot live without me, any more than I without 
her. What shall I say to her? what face shall I put 
on ? ” Thereupon her perfidies come back to me : 
“Ah! may she not come! ” I exclaim to myself; “let 
her not approach ! I am capable of killing her ! ” 

Since my last letter I had not heard her spoken 
of. “At last, what is she doing?” I said to myself. 
“She loves another? Let us also love another. Love 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


49 


whom?” And, while seeking, I heard, as it were, a 
voice in the distance crying out: “You, another be- 
sides me ! Two beings who love each other, who em- 
brace each other, and who are not you and I ! Is it 
possible ? Are you mad ? ’ ’ 

“Dastard!” Desgenais said to me, “when will you 
forget that woman? Is she, then, such a great loss? 
the fine pleasure of being loved by her ! Take the first 
that comes.” 

“No,” I replied, “it is not so great a loss. Have I 
not done what I ought? have I not driven her from 
here? What, then, have you to say? The rest con- 
cerns me ; bulls wounded in the circus are free to go 
and lie down in a corner with the matador’s sword in 
their shoulders and to die in peace. What shall I do, 
tell me at once ? Who are your first comers? You will 
show me a clear sky, trees and houses, men who speak, 
drink, sing, women who dance and horses that gallop. 
All that is not life, it is the bustle of life. Come, 
come, give me rest.”' 


v 


When Desgenais saw that my despair was beyond 
remedy, that I did not want to listen to any one nor 
to leave my room, he took the matter seriously. I saw 
him arrive one evening with an air of gravity; he 


5 ° 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


spoke to me of my mistress and continued in a tone 
of banter, saying of women all the evil that he thought. 
While he was speaking I had been resting on my 
elbow, and, raising myself on my bed, I listened to 
him attentively. 

It was on one of those sombre evenings when the 
whistling wind resembles the moans of one dying; a 
cutting rain was beating against the glass, leaving at 
intervals a deadly silence. All nature suffers at these 
times; the trees are agitated with grief or sadly bow 
the head; the field birds shut themselves up in the 
thickets; the streets of the cities are empty. My wound 
was making me suffer. Yet on the evening before, I 
had a mistress and a friend ; my mistress had betrayed 
me, my friend had stretched me on a bed of pain. I 
did not yet clearly unravel what was passing through 
my head; it seemed to me sometimes that I had had 
a dream full of horror, and that I had only to close my 
eyes to wake up again happy next day; sometimes it 
was my whole life that seemed to me a ridiculous and 
puerile dream, the falseness of which had just been 
unveiled. Desgenais was seated in front of me, near 
the lamp; he was firm and serious, with a perpetual 
smile. He was a man full of heart, but dry as pumice- 
stone. A precocious experience had made him bald 
before aging ; he knew life, and had wept in his time ; 
but his grief wore a cuirass; he was a materialist, and 
waited for death. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


5 1 


“Octave,” he said to me, “according to what is 
passing in you, I see that you believe in love such as 
romancers and poets represent it ; you believe, in a 
word, in what is said here below, and not in what is 
done in it. That comes from the fact that you do 
not reason soundly and it may lead you to very great 
misfortunes. 

“ Poets represent love as sculptors picture to us 
beauty, as musicians create melody; that is to say, 
endowed with a nervous and exquisite organization, 
they collect with discernment and ardor the purest ele- 
ments of life, the most beautiful lines of matter, and 
the most harmonious voices of nature. There was at 
Athens, it is said, a great number of pretty girls ; 
Praxiteles sketched them all one after the other ; after 
which, of all these diverse beauties, each of which had 
her defect, he made a single beauty without defect, and 
created Venus. The first man who made a musical 
instrument, and who gave to the art of music its rules 
and its laws, had, long before, listened to the murmur- 
ing of reeds and the singing of linnets. Thus the poets, 
who knew life, after having seen many more or less 
passing loves, after having felt profoundly to what a 
sublime degree of exaltation passion can at moments 
rise, cutting off from human nature all the elements that 
degrade it, created those mysterious names that have 
passed from age to age on men’s lips: Daphnis and 
Chloe, Hero and Leander, Pyramus and Thisbe. 


5 2 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


“To want to look in real life for loves like to those, 
eternal and absolute, is the same thing as to seek on the 
public highway for women as beautiful as Venus, or 
to wish for nightingales singing the symphonies of 
Beethoven. 

“Perfection does not exist; to comprehend it is the 
triumph of the human intellect ; to desire it in order to 
possess it is the most dangerous of human follies. Open 
your window, Octave ; do you not see the infinite ? do 
you not feel that the heavens are unbounded ? does not 
your reason tell you so? and yet do you conceive the 
infinite ? do you form any idea of a thing without end, 
you who were bom yesterday and who will die to- 
morrow ? In all the countries of the world that spec- 
tacle of immensity has been the cause of the greatest 
acts of madness. Religions come from that ; it was to 
possess the infinite that Cato cut his throat, that the 
Christians gave themselves up to the lions, the Hugue- 
nots to the Catholics; all peoples of the earth have 
stretched out their arms towards that immense space 
and have wished to precipitate themselves into it. 
The madman wants to possess Heaven ; the wise man 
admires it, kneels, and does not desire. 

“Perfection, friend, is no more made for us than 
immensity. It must not be sought in anything, nor 
demanded of anything, neither of love, beauty, nor of 
happiness, nor of virtue ; but one must love it to be as 
virtuous, beautiful, and happy as man can be. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


53 


“ Let us suppose that you have in your study a paint- 
ing by Raphael that you regarded as perfect ; let us 
suppose that yesterday evening, while inspecting it 
closely, you discovered in one of the personages of that 
painting a gross fault in design, a broken member or 
an unnatural muscle, like one, it is said, that is to be 
found in one of the arms of the ancient gladiator ; you 
will certainly feel great displeasure, yet you will not 
throw your painting into the fire; you will only say 
that it is not perfect, but that there are points which 
are worthy of admiration. 

“ There are women whose natural good qualities and 
sincerity of heart prevent them from having two lovers 
at the same time. You believed that your mistress was 
such ; that would have been better, indeed. You have 
discovered that she was deceiving you ; that drives you 
to despise her, to maltreat her, to believe, in fine, that 
she is worthy of your hate. 

“ Even though your mistress had never deceived you, 
and though she love no one but you at present, reflect, 
Octave, how far from perfection her love would still be, 
how human it would be, small, confined to the laws of 
the world’s hypocrisy ; reflect that another man had 
her before you, and even more than one other man ; 
that still others will have her after you. 

“ Make this reflection : what is driving you to despair 
at this moment is that idea of perfection which you had 
formed for yourself regarding your mistress and from 


54 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


which you see that she has fallen. But as soon as you 
shall have clearly understood that this first idea itself 
was human, small, and restricted, you will see what a 
little matter is a degree more or less on that great 
rotten ladder of human imperfection. 

“You will willingly agree, will you not? that your 
mistress has had other men and that she will have 
others; you will tell me, no doubt, that it is of little 
importance to know it, provided she loves you and has 
only you as long as she will love you. But as for me, 
I say to you : Since she has had other men than you, 
what matters it whether it be yesterday or two years 
ago ? Since she will have other men, what matters it 
whether it be to-morrow or two years hence? Since 
she is to love you only once, and since she loves you, 
what matters it, then, whether it be for two years or for 
but a single night ? Are you a man, Octave ? Do you 
see the leaves falling from the trees, the sun rising and 
setting? Do you hear the clock of life vibrating at 
each beat of your heart ? Is there, then, such a great 
difference to us between a love of a year and a love of 
an hour, you madman who, through that window large 
as the hand, can see the infinite ? 

“You call the woman honest who loves you faith- 
fully for two years; apparently you have an almanac 
made expressly for finding out how long it takes for 
men’s kisses to dry on women’s lips. You make a 
great difference between the woman who gives herself 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


55 


for money and her who gives herself for pleasure, be- 
tween her who gives herself for pride and her who gives 
herself for devotedness. Among the women whom you 
buy you pay some more than you do others; among 
those whom you seek out for the pleasure of the senses, 
you abandon yourself to some more confidently than 
you do to others ; among those whom you have from 
vanity, you show yourself prouder of this one than of 
that one ; and of those to whom you are devoted, there 
are some to whom you will give the third of your heart, 
to another the fourth part, to another half, according to 
her education, manners, name, birth, beauty, tempera- 
ment, occasion, according to what people say of her, 
according to what time it is, according to what you 
have drunk at dinner. 

“You have women, Octave, for the reason that you 
are young, ardent, that your visage is oval and regular, 
that your hair is carefully combed; but, for this very 
reason, my friend, you do not know what a woman is. 

“Nature, above all, wills the reproduction of beings; 
everywhere, from the mountain’s top to the ocean’s 
bed, life is afraid to die. God, to preserve His work, 
has, then, established this law, that the greatest enjoy- 
ment of all living beings should be the act of genera- 
tion. The palm-tree, sending to its female its fecund 
dust, shudders with love in the glowing winds; the 
rutting stag forces its resisting hind; the dove palpi- 
tates under the wings of the male like a sensitive lover ; 


56 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


and man, holding his companion in his arms, in the 
bosom of omnipotent nature, feels bounding in his 
heart the divine spark that created him. 

“Oh, my friend! when you clasp in your naked 
arms a beautiful and robust woman, if lust draws tears 
from you, if you feel oaths of eternal love sobbing on 
your lips, if the infinite descends into your heart, do 
not fear to surrender yourself, even should you be 
with a courtesan. 

“But do not confound the wine with the intoxica- 
tion ; do not believe the cup divine from which you 
drink the divine potion ; do not be astonished in the 
evening to find it empty and broken. It is a woman, 
it is a fragile vessel, made of earth by a potter. 

“Thank God for pointing out Heaven to you, and 
because you flap the wing do not believe yourself a bird. 
Birds themselves cannot cross the clouds ; there is a 
sphere in which air is wanting to them ; and the lark, 
which rises singing in the morning mists, sometimes 
falls dead on the furrow. 

“Take of love what a temperate man takes of wine; 
do not become a drunkard. If your mistress is sincere 
and faithful, love her for that; but if she is not so, and 
she be young and beautiful, love her because she is 
young and beautiful ; and, if she is agreeable and witty, 
still love her ; and, if she is nothing of all that, but she 
loves you only, love her still. One is not loved every 
evening. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


57 


“ Do not tear out your hair and do not speak of stab- 
bing yourself because you have a rival. You say that 
your mistress is deceiving you for another ; it is your 
pride that suffers from it : but change only the words ; 
say to yourself that it is he whom she is deceiving for 
you, and how glorious you are. 

“ Make no rule of conduct for yourself, and do not 
say that you wish to be loved to the exclusion of every 
one else; for, in saying that, as you are a man and 
inconstant yourself, you are forced to add tacitly : i As 
much as that is possible. * 

“Take time as it comes, the wind as it blows, woman 
as she is. Spanish women, the first among women, 
love faithfully ; their hearts are sincere and violent, but 
they carry a stiletto on their hearts. Italian women are 
lascivious, but they seek broad shoulders and take their 
lovers’ measure with tailors’ tapes. English women are 
exalted and melancholy, but they are cold and formal. 
German women are tender and sweet, but insipid and 
monotonous. French women are witty, elegant, and 
voluptuous, but they lie like demons. 

“Above all, do not accuse women of being what they 
are ; it is we who have made them so, unmaking the 
work of nature on every occasion. 

“ Nature, which thinks of everything, has made the 
virgin to be a lover; but at her first child, her hair 
falls, her bosom is deformed, her body bears a scar ; 
woman is made to be a mother. Man would perhaps 


58 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


withdraw from her then, disgusted at beauty lost ; but 
his child clings to him weeping. That is the family, 
the human law; all that deviates from it is monstrous. 
What constitutes the virtue of rural folks is that their 
wives are child-bearing and nursing machines, as they 
themselves are laboring machines. They have neither 
false hair nor virginal milk ; but their loves have no 
leprosy; in their artless couplings they take no notice 
that America has been discovered. Lacking sensuality, 
their wives are sound ; their hands are callous, but their 
hearts are not so. 

“ Civilization acts contrary to nature. In our cities 
and in accordance with our manners, the virgin, made 
to run in the sun, to admire nude wrestlers, as at 
Lacedaemon, to choose, to love, she is shut up, she is 
locked up ; yet she hides a romance under her crucifix ; 
pale and idle, she is corrupted in front of her mirror, in 
the silence of night she tarnishes that beauty which is 
stifling her and which needs the open air. Then all of 
a sudden she is taken thence, knowing nothing, loving 
nothing, desiring everything ; an old woman indoctri- 
nates her, an obscene word is whispered in her ear, and 
she is thrust into the bed of a stranger who violates her. 
That is marriage, that is to say, the civilized family. 
And now behold that poor girl making a child ; look at 
her hair, her bosom, her body becoming tarnished; 
look at her having lost the beauty of lovers, and not 
having loved. Look at her having conceived, look at 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


59 


her having given birth to a child, and asking why, and 
she is told : ‘You are a mother.’ She answers : ‘ I am 
not a mother ; let that child be given to a woman who 
has milk, there is none in my breasts, it is not thus that 
milk comes to women. ’ Her husband answers her that 
she is right, that his child would disgust him with her. 
One comes, one decks her, one puts Mechlin lace on 
her blood-stained bed ; she is cared for, she is healed of 
the sickness of maternity. A month later, see her at 
the Tuileries, at the ball, at the Opera : her child is at 
Chaillot, at Auxerre ; her husband in the place of ill 
repute. Ten young men speak to her of love, of de- 
votedness, of sympathy, of eternal embrace, of all that 
she has in her heart. She takes one of them, draws 
him to her breast ; he dishonors her, returns, and goes 
to the Bourse. Now see her launch ; she weeps one 
night, and finds that the tears redden her eyes. She 
takes a consoler, for whose loss another consoles her ; 
thus until she is thirty and over. It is then that with 
senses blunted and gangrened, no longer having any- 
thing human, not even disgust, one evening she meets 
a handsome youth with black hair, with ardent eye, 
with a heart palpitating with hope; she recalls her 
youth, she remembers what she suffered, and, giving him 
the lessons of her life, she teaches him never to love. 

“ That is woman such as we have made her ; there 
are our mistresses. But what ! they are women, and 
there are good moments with them ! 


6o 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


“ If you are of firm temper, sure of yourself and truly 
a man, this, then, is what I advise you : rush fearlessly 
into the torrent of the world ; have courtesans, dancers, 
middle-class girls, and marchionesses. Be constant and 
faithless, sad and joyous, deceived or respected; but 
know whether you are loved, for, from the moment that 
you will be so, what matters the rest to you ? 

“ If you are a mediocre and ordinary man, I am of 
the opinion that you will seek some time before decid- 
ing, but that you did not count on anything of what 
you will have supposed you would find in your mistress. 

“ If you are a weak man, inclined to let yourself be 
dominated, and to take root w r here you see a little earth, 
make for yourself a cuirass that resists everything : for, 
if you give way to your weakly nature, where you will 
have taken root you will not grow ; you will dry up like 
a sluggish plant, and you will bear neither flower nor 
fruit. The sap of your life will pass into a foreign 
bark ; all your actions will be pale as the willow leaf ; 
you will have to water you only your own tears, and to 
nourish you only your own heart. 

“ But if you are of an exalted nature, believing in 
dreams and wishing to realize them, I answer you then 
quite plainly : * Love does not exist.’ 

“For I concur in your opinion, and I say to you : 
To love is to give body and soul, or, to express it 
better, it is to make a single being of two ; it is to walk 
in the sun, in the open, breezy air, amid wheat fields 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


61 


and meadows, with a body of four arms, two heads, and 
two hearts. Love is the faith, the religion of terrestrial 
happiness ; it is a luminous triangle placed in the dome 
of that temple which we call the world. To love is to 
walk freely in that temple, and to have at one’s side a 
being capable of understanding why a thought, a word, 
a flower, makes you stop and raise your head towards 
the celestial triangle. To exercise man’s noble faculties 
is a great good, and that is why genius is a fine thing ; 
but to double one’s faculties, to press a heart and an 
understanding on one’s understanding and one’s heart, 
is the supreme happiness. God has done no more for 
man : that is why love is worth more than genius. 
Now, tell me, is that our wives’ love ? No, no, it must 
be admitted. With them, to love is something else ; it 
is to go out veiled, to write mysteriously, to walk trem- 
blingly on tiptoe, to plot and banter, to cast languish- 
ing glances, to heave chaste sighs in a starched and 
stiffened dress, then to draw the bolts so as to throw it 
over her head, to humiliate a rival, to deceive a hus- 
band, to drive her lovers mad ; with our wives, to love 
is to play at lying as children play hide-and-seek : a 
hideous debauch of the heart, worse than all the Roman 
lubricity at the Saturnalia of Priapus ; a bastard parody 
of vice itself as well as of virtue ; a dull and low com- 
edy in which everything is whispered and is acted with 
oblique looks, in which everything is small, elegant, 
and misshapen, as in those porcelain monsters that are 


62 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


brought from China ; a lamentable derision of what 
there is of beauty and ugliness, of divine and infernal 
in the world ; a shadow without a body, the skeleton of 
all that God has made.” 

Thus spoke Desgenais in a snappish tone, amid the 
silence of the night. 


VI 


I was next day in the Bois de Boulogne, before 
dinner ; the weather was dull. Arrived at the Porte 
Maillot, I let my horse go where he pleased, and giving 
myself up to a profound reverie, I gradually went over 
again in my head all that Desgenais had said to me. 

As I crossed an alley, I heard myself called by name. 
I turned back, and saw in an open carriage one of my 
mistress’s most intimate friends. She called out to 
stop, and, extending her hand with a friendly air, asked 
me, if I had nothing to do, to come and dine with her. 

This woman, who was called Madame Levasseur, was 
small, stout, and very blonde ; she had always dis- 
pleased me, I know not why, there never having been 
anything disagreeable in our relations. Yet I could 
not resist the desire to accept her invitation ; I pressed 
her hand while thanking her ; I felt that we were going 
to speak of my mistress. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


63 


She gave me some one to lead back my horse ; I got 
into her carriage, she was alone there, and we at once 
resumed the way to Paris. Rain was beginning to fall, 
they closed the carriage ; thus shut up in a tete-a-tete, 
we at first remained silent. I looked at her with inex- 
pressible sadness ; not only was she my faithless one’s 
friend, but she was her confidante. Often, during the 
happy days, she had been a third party in our evening 
meetings. With what impatience I had borne her then ! 
how often I had counted the moments that she spent 
with us ! Whence no doubt my aversion to her. It 
was all very fine for me to know that she approved of 
our love, that she even sometimes defended me to my 
mistress in days of storm; I could not, for all her friend- 
ship, pardon her importunities. Despite her goodness 
and the services that she had rendered us, she seemed 
to me ugly, tiresome. Alas ! how beautiful I found her 
now ! I looked at her hands, her garments ; each move- 
ment went to my heart; the whole past was written there. 
She saw me, she divined what I felt toward her, and that 
memories were oppressing me. The journey passed 
thus, I looking at her, she smiling at me. At last, when 
we entered Paris, she took my hand: “Well!” she said. 
“Well,” I answered, sobbing, “tell her, madame, if 
you wish.” And I shed a torrent of tears. 

But when after dinner we were by the fireside : “ But 
at last,” she said, “is all that affair irrevocable? is 
there no further means ? ’ * 


6 4 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


“Alas! madam e,” I replied, “ there is nothing irre- 
vocable but the sorrow that will kill me. My history 
is not a long one to tell : I can neither love her, nor 
love another, nor do without loving. ’ ’ 

She threw herself back on her chair at these words, 
and I saw on her countenance the marks of her com- 
passion. Long did she seem to reflect and commune 
with herself, as if feeling an echo in her heart. Her 
eyes were veiled, and she remained shut up as in a 
memory. She extended her hand to me, I approached 
her. “And I also,” she murmured, “ and I also ! that 
is what I have known under proper circumstances. ’ ’ A 
keen emotion stopped her. 

Of all the sisters of Love, one of the most beautiful 
is Pity. I held Madame Levasseur’s hand; she was 
almost in my arms ; she began to tell me all that she 
could imagine in my mistress’s favor, to complain of 
me as much as to excuse her. My sadness increased 
thereat ; what answer should I make ? She passed from 
that to speak of herself. 

Not long ago, she said to me, a man who loved her 
had abandoned her. She had made great sacrifices ; 
her fortune was compromised, as well as the honor of 
her name. On the part of her husband, whom she 
knew to be vindictive, there had been threats. It was 
a story mingled with tears, and which interested me so 
much that I forgot my own sorrows as I listened to 
hers. She had been married against her heart, she 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


6 5 


had struggled for a long time ; but she regretted noth- 
ing, except being no longer loved. I believe even that 
she accused herself to some extent, as not having known 
how to preserve her lover’s heart, and having acted with 
levity in his regard. 

When, after having comforted her heart, she became 
gradually as if mute and uncertain : “ No, madame,” I 
said to her, “ it was not chance that brought me to-day 
to the Bois de Boulogne. Let me believe that human 
sorrows are straying sisters, but that a good angel is 
somewhere, which sometimes designedly unites these 
weak trembling hands extended toward God. Since 
I have seen you again and since you have called me, 
do not repent, then, of having spoken ; and, whoever 
it be who is listening to you, never repent of tears. 
The secret that you confide to me is only a tear fallen 
from your eyes, but it has remained on my heart. Per- 
mit me to return, and let us sometimes suffer together.” 

A sympathy so keen took possession of me as I spoke 
thus, that, without reflecting on it, I embraced her ; it 
did not occur to my mind that she might be offended 
thereat, and she did not even appear to notice it. 

A deep silence reigned in the house in which Madame 
Levasseur dwelt. Some tenant being ill there, they had 
spread straw in the street, so that the carriages made no 
noise. I was near her, holding her in my arms, and 
abandoning myself to one of the sweetest emotions of 
the heart, the feeling of a sorrow shared. 


66 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


Our conversation continued in a tone of the most 
expansive friendship. She told me her sufferings, I 
related mine to her ; and, between these two sorrows 
that were touching each other, I felt an indescribable 
sweetness arise, an indescribably consoling voice, like 
a pure and celestial accord born of the concert of two 
moaning voices. Yet, during all those tears, as I 
leaned towards Madame Levasseur, I saw only her 
countenance. In a moment of silence, having raised 
myself up and receded a little, I perceived that whilst 
we were speaking, she had rested her foot high enough 
on the chimney-piece for her leg, her dress having 
slipped, to be entirely exposed. To me it seemed 
singular that, seeing my confusion, she did not disturb 
herself, and I took a few steps while turning my head 
so as to give her time to adjust her skirts ; she did 
nothing of the kind. Returning to the fireplace, I 
remained there leaning silently, looking at that dis- 
order, the appearance of which was too revolting to be 
borne. At last, meeting her eyes and seeing clearly 
that she herself very well perceived what was the matter, 
I felt as if thunderstruck ; for I distinctly understood 
that I was the plaything of an effrontery so monstrous, 
that grief itself was to her only a seduction of the 
senses. I took my hat without saying a word : she let 
down her dress slowly, and I left the room making her 
a low bow. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


67 


VII 


On returning home, I found a large wooden box in 
the middle of my room. One of my aunts had died, 
and I had a share in her inheritance, which was not 
very large. This box contained, among other indif- 
ferent articles, a quantity of dusty old books. Know- 
ing not what to do, and worn out with lassitude, I 
undertook to read some of them. For the most part 
they were romances of the age of Louis XV. ; my 
aunt, a very devout woman, # had probably inherited 
some of them herself, and had kept them without 
reading them ; for they were, so to say, so many 
catechisms of libertinism. 

I have in my mind a singular propensity to reflect 
on everything that happens to me, even to the slightest 
incidents, and to give them a sort of consequent and 
moral reason ; I treat them, in a certain sense, as 
rosary beads, and I try, in spite of myself, to connect 
them by one and the same string. 

Though I seem puerile in this respect, the arrival of 
these books struck me, in the circumstance in which I 
then found myself. I devoured them with unbounded 
bitterness and sadness, my heart broken, and the smile 
on my lips. “Yes, you are right,” I said to them, 
“you alone know the secrets of life; you alone dare 


68 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


to say that nothing is true but debauch, hypocrisy, and 
corruption. Be my friends, cast your corrosive poisons 
on my soul’s wound ; teach me to believe in you.” 

While I was thus burying myself in darkness, my 
favorite poets and my books of study remained scat- 
tered in the dust. I trampled them under foot in my 
attacks of wrath: “And you,” I said to them, “mad 
dreamers who teach only how to suffer, miserable 
arrangers of words, charlatans if you knew the truth, 
but, if you were in good faith, liars in both cases, who 
tell fairy stories with the human heart, I will burn all 
of you even to the last ! ’ ’ 

Amid all that, tears came to my aid, and I perceived 
that there was nothing true but my sorrow. “Well,” 
I then exclaimed in my delirium, “tell me, good and 
bad genii, counselors of good and evil, tell me, then, 
what it is necessary to do ! Choose, then, an arbiter 
between you.” 

I took up an old Bible that was on my table, and 
opened it at random : “Answer me, you, God’s book,” 

I said to it ; “let us know a little of what your advice 
is.” I fell on these words of Ecclesiastes , chapter ix. : 

“For all this I considered in my heart, even to de- 
clare all this, that the righteous, and the wise, and their 
works, are in the hand of God : no man knoweth either 
love or hatred by all that is before them. 

“All things come alike to all : there is one event to 
the righteous, and to the wicked ; to the good, and to 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


69 


the clean, and to the unclean ; to him that sacrificeth, 
and to him that sacrificeth not : as is the good, so is 
the sinner ; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an 
oath. 

“ This is an evil among all things that are done under 
the sun, that there is one event unto all : yea, also the 
heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is 
in their heart while they live, and after that, they go to 
the dead.” 

I remained stupefied after having read these words ; 
I did not believe that such a sentiment existed in the 
Bible. “ So, then,” I said to it, “and you also doubt, 
you, Book of Hope ! ” 

What, then, do astronomers think, when they pre- 
dict at a stated point, at the hour named, the passage 
of a comet, the most irregular of celestial strollers? 
What, then, do naturalists think, when they show you, 
through a microscope, animals in a drop of water ? Do 
they believe, then, that they invent what they perceive, 
and that their microscopes and their spy-glasses make 
laws for nature ? What, then, did the First Lawgiver 
to men think, when, seeking what ought to be the first 
stone of the social edifice, no doubt irritated by some 
importunate talker, he struck on his brass tables, and 
felt the law of retaliation calling out in his entrails? 
had he, then, invented justice? And he who was the 
first to snatch from the earth the fruit planted by his 
neighbor, and who put it under his cloak, and who 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


70 

fled as he looked here and there, had he invented 
shame ? And he who, having found that same robber 
who had despoiled him of the product of his labor, 
pardoned him his first offence, and, instead of raising 
a hand against him, said to him : “Sit down there 
and take this also ; ’ ’ when, after having thus done 
good for evil, he raised his head towards heaven, and 
felt his heart bound, and his eyes moisten with tears, 
and his knees bend to the ground, had he then in- 
vented virtue ? O God ! O God ! there is a woman 
who speaks of love and who deceives me ; there is a 
man who speaks of friendship, and who advises me to 
distract myself in debauch; there is another woman 
who weeps and who wants to console me with the mus- 
cles of her flanks ; there is a Bible that speaks of God, 
and that answers : “ Perhaps ; all that is indifferent.” 

I rushed towards my open window: “Is it true, 
then, that thou art void?” I exclaimed as I looked 
at a great pale sky that was unfolding over my head. 
“Answer, answer ! Before I die, will you put aught 
else than a dream into these two arms here ? ’ ’ 

A deep silence reigned on the place overlooked by 
my windows. As I remained with my arms extended 
and my eyes lost in space, a swallow uttered a plaintive 
cry ; I followed it with my eye in spite of myself ; while 
it was disappearing like an arrow in the distance, a 
young girl passed, singing. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


71 


VIII 

I did not want to yield, however. Before coming to 
take life really on its pleasant side, which seemed to me 
its sinister side, I had resolved to try everything. Thus 
I remained for a very long time a prey to numberless 
sorrows and tonnented by terrible dreams. 

The great reason that kept me from being cured was 
my youth. No matter in what place I was, no matter 
what occupation I imposed on myself, I was able to 
think only of women ; the sight of a woman made me 
tremble. How many times I woke up in the night 
bathed in perspiration, to press my mouth against my 
walls, feeling ready to suffocate ! 

There had occurred to me one of the greatest of 
happinesses, and perhaps one of the rarest, that of 
giving my virginity to love. But the result of it was 
that every idea of pleasure of the senses was united in 
me with an idea of love; that was what ruined me. 
For, not being able to keep myself from thinking con- 
tinually of women, I could do nothing else at the same 
time but day and night revolve again through my head 
all those ideas of debauch, of false loves and of feminine 
treasons of which I was full. To me, to have a woman 
was to love ; now, I dreamt only of women, and I no 
longer believed in the possibility of a true love. 


72 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


All these sufferings inspired me as a sort of madness ; 
sometimes I desired to do as monks do and to scourge 
myself in order to overcome my senses ; sometimes I 
desired to go into the street, into the country, I knew 
not whither, to cast myself at the feet of the first woman 
whom I should meet and to swear an eternal love to 
her. 

God is my witness that I then did all in the world 
to distract myself and to be cured. At first, ever pre- 
occupied with the involuntary idea that the society of 
men was a resort of vice and hypocrisy, where every- 
thing resembled my mistress, I resolved to isolate 
myself from it, and to isolate myself completely. I 
resumed former studies ; I threw myself into history, 
into my ancient poets, into anatomy. There was in 
the house, on the fifth floor, an old German who was 
very well educated, living alone and retired. I pre- 
vailed upon him, not without difficulty, to teach me 
his language ; once at the business, this poor man took 
it to heart. My perpetual distractions afflicted him. 
How often, seated in close converse with me, under 
his smoky lamp, he remained with astonishing patience, 
looking at me with his hands crossed on his book, 
whilst I, lost in my dreams, took no notice either of 
his presence or of his pity ! “ My good sir,” I at last 

said to him, “it is quite useless, but you are the best 
of men. What a task you undertake ! I must be left 
to my destiny; we can do nothing with it, neither you 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 73 

nor I.” I know not whether he understood this lan- 
guage ; he clasped my hand without saying a word, 
and there was no further question of German. 

I felt immediately that solitude, instead of healing, 
was killing me, and completely changed the system. 
I went to the country and launched at a gallop into 
the woods, hunting ; I fenced until I lost my breath ; I 
broke myself down with fatigue, and when, after a day 
of sweat and racing, I reached my bed in the evening, 
smelling of the stable and the powder, I buried my 
head in the pillow, I rolled myself in my covers, and 
I exclaimed : “ Phantom, phantom ! art thou also 

tired ? wilt thou leave me some night ? ’ ’ 

But what was the use of these vain efforts ? solitude 
sent me back to nature, and nature to love. When 
at the Rue de V Observance I saw myself surrounded 
by corpses, wiping my hands on my bloody apron, 
pale amid the dead, suffocated by the odor of putre- 
faction, I turned round in spite of myself, I saw 
floating before my eyes verdant harvests, embalmed 
meadows, and the pensive harmony of evening. “ No,” 
I said to myself, “ it is not science that will console 
me ; it will be useless for me to plunge into that dead 
nature, I myself will die at it like a livid drowned 
person in the skin of a flayed lamb. I will not cure 
myself of my youth ; let us go and live where life is, 
or let us die at least in the sun.” I left, I took a 
horse, I buried myself in the promenades of Sevres 


74 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


and Chaville; I went to stretch myself on a flowery 
meadow, in some secluded valley. Alas ! and all 
those forests, all those meadows cried out to me : 

“What seek you? We are green, poor child, we 
wear the color of hope.” 

Then I returned to the city ; I lost myself in the 
dark streets ; I looked at the lights of all those win- 
dows, all those mysterious nests of families, carriages 
passing, men bumping against each other. Oh ! what 
solitude ! what a sad smoke on those roofs ! what sor- 
row in those tortuous streets where everything prances, 
works, and sweats, where thousands of unknown per- 
sons pass touching elbows ; a sewer in which the bodies 
alone are in society, leaving the souls solitary, and 
where there are none but prostitutes who extend the 
hand to you in passing! “Corrupt thyself! corrupt 
thyself! thou wilt no longer suffer!” That is what 
the cities call out to man, what is written on the walls 
with charcoal, on the pavements with mud, on the 
countenance with extra vasated blood. 

And sometimes, when, seated apart in a parlor, I 
was attending a brilliant feast, seeing all those rosy, 
blue, white women dance, with their bare arms and 
their clusters of hair, like cherubs intoxicated with 
light in their spheres of harmony and beauty: “Ah! 
what a garden!” I said to myself, “what flowers to 
gather, to breathe ! Ah ! daisies, daisies ! what will 
your last petal say to him who will pluck off your 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


75 


leaves ! ‘A little, a little, and not at all.’ That is the 
morality of the world, that the end of your smiles. 
There are, covering this sad abyss that you tread so 
lightly, flower-strewn veils ; it is on that hideous truth 
that you run like hinds on the tips of your little feet ! ” 
“Eh ! by heavens,” said Desgenais, “why take it all 
seriously? That is what has never been seen. Do you 
complain that the bottles become empty? There are 
casks in the cellars, and cellars in the hill-sides. Make 
me a good fish-hook gilt with sweet words, with a 
honeyed fly for bait, and quick ! fish me in the river of 
forgetfulness a pretty consoler, fresh and slippery as an 
eel ; there will still some remain to us, although she will 
have slipped from between your fingers. Love, love, 
you will die from desiring it. Youth must pass; and 
if I were you, I would rather carry off the queen of 
Portugal than study anatomy. ’ ’ 

Such was the advice that I had to listen to on every 
occasion ; and when the hour came I took the way to 
my home, my heart swollen, my cloak over my face ; I 
knelt by the side of my bed, and my poor heart was 
comforted. What tears ! what vows ! what prayers ! 
Galileo struck the earth exclaiming: “And yet it 
moves ! ” So I struck my heart. 


76 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


IX 

All of a sudden, amid the blackest grief, despair, 
youth, and chance forced me to an act which decided 
my lot. 

I had written to my mistress that I no longer wanted 
to see her, and indeed I kept my word, but I spent the 
nights under her windows, seated on a bench at her 
door ; I saw her windows lighted, I heard the sound of 
her piano; sometimes I perceived her as a shadow 
behind her half-open curtains. 

A certain night when I was on that bench, plunged in 
frightful sadness, I saw a belated workman pass who was 
staggering. He was stammering disconnected words, 
mingled with exclamations of joy ; then he interrupted 
himself with singing. He was overcome with wine, and 
his enfeebled limbs led him sometimes to one side of 
the water-course, sometimes to the other. He went 
and fell on the bench of another house in front of me. 
There he rocked himself for some time on his elbows, 
then he fell fast asleep. 

The street was deserted ; a dry wind swept the dust ; 
the moon, in the midst of a cloudless sky, was lighting 
up the place where the man slept. I found myself, 
then, close to that churl, who had no idea of my 
presence, and who was resting on that stone more 
pleasantly, perhaps, than if in his bed. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


77 


In spite of myself, that man gave a diversion to my 
sorrow ; I arose to make way for him, then I returned 
and sat down again. I could not leave that door, on 
which I would not have knocked for an empire ; at last, 
after having walked in all directions, I stopped mechani- 
cally in front of the sleeper. 

“What a sleep ! ” I said to myself. “Assuredly that 
man is not dreaming ; his wife, at such an hour as this, 
is perhaps opening to his neighbor the door of the 
garret in which he sleeps. His garments are in rags, 
his cheeks are hollow, his hands wrinkled ; he is some 
wretch who has not food every day. A thousand de- 
vouring cares, a thousand mortal anguishes, await him 
on his reawakening ; yet he had a crown in his pocket 
this evening, he entered a tavern in which they sold him 
the forgetfulness of his ills; he earned enough in his 
week with which to have one night’s sleep, he has taken 
it, perhaps, from his children’s supper. Now his mis- 
tress may betray him, his friend may glide like a thief 
into his den ; I myself can strike him on the shoulder, 
and call to him that he is being assassinated, that his 
house is on fire ; he will turn over on the other side and 
will fall asleep again. 

“And as for me, and as for me ! ” I continued as l 
traversed the street with long strides, “ I do not sleep, 
I who have in my pocket this evening the wherewithal 
to make him sleep for a year ; I am so proud and so 
mad that I dare not enter a tavern, and I do not see 


78 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


that, if all the unfortunate enter it, it is because happy 
ones leave it. O God ! a bunch of grapes crushed 
under the soles of the feet suffices to dissipate the darkest 
cares and to break all the invisible ropes that the genii 
of evil stretch in our way. We weep like women, we 
suffer like martyrs ; it seems to us, in our despair, that a 
world has crumbled over our head, and we sit down in 
our tears like Adam at the gate of Eden. And, to heal 
a wound wider than the world, it suffices to make a little 
motion of the hand and to moisten our breast. What 
miseries, then, are our sorrows, since they are thus con- 
soled? We are astonished that Providence, who sees 
them, does not send its angels to hear us in our prayers; 
it has no need to take so much trouble ; it has seen 
all our sufferings, all our desires, all our pride of fallen 
angels, and the ocean of evils that surrounds us, and it 
is satisfied with suspending a little black fruit over the 
borders of our path. Since this man sleeps so well on 
this bench, why should I not sleep likewise on mine? 
My rival, perhaps, spends the night with my mistress ; 
he will leave her at daybreak ; she will accompany him 
half-naked to the door, and they will see me asleep. 
Their kisses will not awaken me, and they will tap me 
on the shoulder ; I will turn over on the other side and 
will go to sleep again. ’ ’ 

Thus, filled with a fierce joy, I set out in search of 
a tavern. As it was after midnight, nearly all were 
closed; that made me furious. “What!” I thought, 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


79 

“even this consolation will be refused to me ! ” I ran 
in all directions, knocking at the shops and calling : 
“ Wine ! wine ! ” 

At last I found a tavern open : I asked for a bottle, 
and, without observing whether it was good or bad, I 
swallowed it gulp after gulp ; a second one followed, 
then a third. I treated myself like a sick person, and 
I forced myself to drink, as if it were a matter of a 
remedy ordered by a physician, a question of life or 
death. 

Ere long the vapors of the dark liquor, which was no 
doubt adulterated, surrounded me with a cloud. As I 
had drunk hurriedly, drunkenness seized upon me all of 
a sudden ; I felt my ideas becoming mixed, then calmed, 
then mixed again. At last, reflection abandoning me, 
I raised my eyes to the heavens, as if to bid adieu to 
myself, and stretched myself out with my elbows on the 
table. 

Then only did I perceive that I was not alone in the 
room. At the other extremity of the tavern was a 
group of hideous men, with ghastly figures and rough 
voices. Their costume bespoke that they were not of 
the people, without their being of the bourgeois ; in a 
word, they belonged to that ambiguous class, the vilest 
of all, which has neither calling, nor fortune, nor even 
an industry, except it be an ignoble industry, which is 
neither poor nor rich, and which has the vices of the 
one and the wretchedness of the other. 


8o 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


They were discussing in an undertone disgusting 
cards ; in the midst of them was a girl very young and 
very pretty, neatly dressed, and who seemed to resemble 
them in nothing, except in voice, which was also hoarse 
and cracked too, with a rosy countenance, as if she had 
been a public crier for sixty years. She was looking at 
me attentively, no doubt astonished at seeing me in a 
tavern ; for I was elegantly attired and almost choice in 
my toilet. Gradually she approached ; passing in front 
of my table, she took up the bottles that were there, 
and, seeing all three of them empty, she smiled. I saw 
that she had superb teeth of sparkling whiteness ; I took 
her hand, and begged her to be seated beside me ; she 
did so with good grace and asked, as her order, that 
some supper be brought to her. 

I looked at her without saying a word, and my eyes 
were filled with tears ; she noticed this, and asked me 
why, but I could not answer her ; I shook my head as if 
to make my tears flow more abundantly, for I felt them 
trickling down my cheeks. She understood that I had 
some secret sorrow, and did not try to divine its cause ; 
she took out her handkerchief, and, while supping very 
pleasantly, she wiped my face from time to time. 

There was in that girl something so indescribably 
horrible and so sweet, and an impudence so singularly 
mingled with pity, that I did not know what to think of 
her. If she had taken my hand in the street, she 
would have horrified me ; but it seemed to me so odd 



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CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


8 1 


that a creature whom I had never seen, whoever she was, 
should come, without saying a word to me, sup in front 
of me, and wipe away my tears with her handkerchief, 
that I remained spellbound, at the same time disgusted 
and delighted. I understood the tavern-keeper to ask 
her if she knew me ; she answered yes, and that I be 
let alone. Ere long the players departed, and, the 
tavern-keeper having passed into the room back of his 
shop after having closed his door and his outside shut- 
ters, I remained alone with this girl. 

All that I had just done had come so quickly, and I 
had obeyed such a strange impulse of despair, that I 
thought I was dreaming, and that my thoughts were 
struggling in a labyrinth. 

It seemed to me either that I was mad, or that I had 
obeyed a supernatural power. 

“Who are you?” I exclaimed to myself suddenly; 
“what do you want of me? how do you know me? 
who told you to wipe away my tears ? Is it your trade 
that you are practising, and do you think that I want 
you? I would not touch you even with the end of 
my finger. What are you doing there ? answer. Is it 
money you want ? For how much do you sell that pity 
that you have ? ’ ’ 

I arose and wanted to leave; but I felt that I was 
staggering. At the same time my eyes became dim, a 
mortal weakness took possession of me, and I fell on a 
stool. 


82 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


“ You are suffering,” said that girbto me as she took 
hold of my arm; “you have drunk like a youth that 
you are, not knowing what you were doing. Stay on 
this chair, and wait for a hack to pass in the street ; you 
will tell me where your mother lives, and he will take 
you home, as in truth,” she added smiling, “you find 
me homely.” 

As she spoke I raised my eyes. Perhaps it was the 
intoxication that deceived me ; I do not know whether 
I had seen indistinctly until then, or saw indistinctly at 
that moment ; but I suddenly perceived that that unfor- 
tunate one bore on her countenance a fatal resemblance 
to my mistress. I felt chilled at this sight. There is a 
certain shiver that takes hold of a man’s hair; the 
common people say it is death that is passing over your 
head, but it was not death that was passing over mine. 

It was the malady of the age, or rather that girl was 
it herself ; and it was she who, under those pale and 
mocking traits, with that hoarse voice came and sat 
down in front of me in the farther end of the tavern. 


x 


As soon as I had perceived that this woman resembled 
my mistress, a frightful, an irresistible idea had taken 
possession of my sick brain, and I at once carried it out. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


83 


During the early days of my loves, my mistress had 
sometimes come to visit me by stealth. Those were 
feast days in my little room ; flowers arrived there, the 
fires sparkled brightly, I prepared a good supper ; the 
bed had also its nuptial deckings to receive the dearly 
beloved. Often, seated on my sofa, under the glass, I 
had contemplated her during the silent hours when our 
hearts spoke to each other. I looked at her, like to the 
Fairy Mab, changing into a paradise that little solitary 
space where so often I had wept. She was there amid 
all those books, all those scattered garments, all those 
battered articles of furniture, between those four gloomy 
walls: how sweetly she shone amid all that poverty ! 

These memories, as soon as I had lost her, pursued 
me unrelentingly ; they robbed me of sleep. My books, 
my walls, spoke to me of her : I could not bear them. 
My bed drove me into the street ; I had a horror of it, 
when I was not weeping there. 

I brought, then, that girl thither; I tofd her to be 
seated and to turn her back to me ; I made her get half- 
undressed. Then I put my room in order around her 
as formerly for my mistress. I placed the armchairs 
where they were on a certain evening that I recalled. 
Generally, in all our ideas of happiness there is a certain 
memory that dominates ; a day, an hour that surpassed 
all the others, or, if not, that was the type and inefface- 
able model for them ; a moment comes, amid all that, 
when man has exclaimed, like Theodore in Lope de 


8 4 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


Vega’s comedy: “Fortune ! drive a gold nail in your 
wheel.” 

Having thus arranged everything, I kindled a great 
fire, and, seating myself on my heels, I began to feel 
intoxicated with an unbounded despair, I went down 
into the bottom of my heart, to feel it twist and con- 
tract. Yet I murmured in my head a Tyrolean romance 
that my mistress was incessantly singing : 

Altra volta gieri biele, 

Blanch’ e rossa com’ un’ flore ; 

Ma ora no. Non son piii biele, 

Consumatis dal’ amore . I 2 

I heard the echo of that poor romance resound in the 
desert of my heart. I said : “ That is man’s happiness; 
that is my little paradise ; that is my Fairy Mab, that a 
girl of the streets. My mistress is worth no more. 
That is what one finds at the bottom of the glass from 
which one has drunk the nectar of the gods ; that is the 
corpse of love.” 

The unfortunate one, hearing me sing, began to sing 
also. I became as pale as death at this ; for that rough 
and ignoble voice, emerging from that being that resem- 
bled my mistress, seemed to me like a symbol of what I 
was experiencing. It was debauch personified that was 
thickening the words in her throat, amid a blooming 
youth. It seemed to me that my mistress, since her 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


85 


perfidy, must have a voice like that. I remembered 
Faust, who, dancing at the Brocken with a naked young 
sorceress, saw a red mouse emerge from her mouth. 

“ Silence ! ” I called to her. I arose and approached 
her; she seated herself smiling on my bed, and I 
stretched myself beside her like my own statue on my 
tomb. 

I ask you, you, men of the age, who, at this present 
hour, are rushing to your pleasures, to the ball or to the 
opera, and who, this evening, when you lie down, read 
yourselves to sleep with some hackneyed blasphemy of 
old Voltaire’s, some reasoning trifle of Paul-Louis 
Courier, some speech on economics of a committee of 
our Chambers, who, in a word, respire, through some 
one of your pores, the cold substances of that monstrous 
water-lily which Reason plants in the heart of our 
cities ; I ask you, if perchance this obscure book should 
fall into your hands, not to smile with a lofty disdain, 
not to shrug your shoulders too much ; do not say to 
yourselves too assuredly that I am complaining of an 
imaginary evil ; that after all, human reason is the finest 
of our faculties, and that there is no truth here below 
but the stock-jobbing of the Bourse, gambling dens, 
Bordeaux table wine, good health of body, indifference 
to others, and in the evening, in bed, limber muscles 
covered with a perfumed skin. 

For some day, amid your stagnant and motionless 
life, a gale of wind may pass. Those fine trees that 


86 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


you water with the tranquil waters of your rivers of for- 
getfulness, Providence may blow over them ; you may 
be in despair, you impassible men; there are tears in 
your eyes. I will not tell you that your mistresses may 
betray you : that is not to you so painful a thing as 
when one of your horses dies ; but I will tell you that 
people lose at the Bourse, that when people play a 
trump, they may meet a higher ; and, if you do not play, 
remember that your crowns, your moneyed peace, your 
gold and silver happiness are with a banker who may 
fail or in public funds that may not pay ; I will tell you 
that, in fine, cold though you be, you can love some- 
thing ; a fibre in the depths of your entrails may be 
distended, and you may utter a cry resembling that of 
pain. Some day, wandering in the muddy streets, when 
material enjoyments will no longer be there to occupy 
your indolent powers, when the real and the daily will 
be wanting to you, you may perchance come to look 
around you with hollow cheeks, and to seat yourself on 
a deserted bench at midnight. 

O men of marble, sublime egoists, inimitable reason- 
ers, who have never been guilty of an act of despair or 
of an error in arithmetic, if that ever happens to you, 
at the time of your ruin, recall Abelard when he had 
lost Heloise. For he loved her more than you do your 
horses, your gold crowns and your mistresses ; for he 
had lost, in separating from her, more than you will 
ever lose, more than your Prince Satan himself would 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


87 


lose by falling a second time from heaven ; for he loved 
her with a certain love of which the newspapers do 
not speak, and the shadow of which your wives and 
daughters do not observe on our stages and in our 
books ; for he had spent half his life in kissing her on 
her fair brow, in teaching her to sing the psalms of 
David and the canticles of Saul ; for he had only her 
upon earth ; and yet God consoled him. 

Believe me, when in your distress you think of Abe- 
lard you will not see with the same eye the mild blas- 
phemies of old Voltaire and Courier’s triflings ; you 
will feel that human reason can heal illusions, but not 
heal sufferings; that God has made it a good house- 
keeper, but not a Sister of Charity. You will find that 
the heart of man when he said : “I believe in nothing, 
for I see nothing,” had not said its last word. You 
will seek around you something like a hope ; you will 
go to throw back the church doors to see whether they 
still move, but you will find them walled up ; you will 
think of becoming Trappists, and the destiny that 
taunts you will answer you with a bottle of wine of the 
people and a courtesan. 

And if you drink the bottle, if you take the courtesan 
and bring her to your bed, know what may come of it. 




















PART SECOND 













PART SECOND 


I 


On awaking next day I felt so profound a disgust 
for myself, I found myself so abased, so degraded in 
my own eyes, that a horrible temptation seized me on 
the first impulse. I bounded out of bed, I ordered 
the creature to dress and to leave as soon as possible; 
then I sat down, and, as I surveyed the walls of my 
room with desolate looks, my eyes stopped mechanically 
towards the corner where my pistols hung. 

At the very time when suffering thought advances, as 
it were, with outstretched arms towards annihilation, 
when our soul adopts a violent decision, it seems that, 
in the physical action of taking down a weapon, of 
getting it ready, in the very coldness of the iron, there 

9 1 


92 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


is a material horror, independent of the will ; the fin- 
gers adjust themselves with anguish, the arm becomes 
stiff. Whenever a man walks to death, entire nature 
recoils in him. Thus I cannot express what I felt while 
that girl was dressing, unless it were as if my pistol had 
said to me : “ Think of what you are going to do.” 

Since then, indeed, I have often thought of what 
would have happened to me if, as I wanted, the creature 
had dressed in haste and retired at once. No doubt the 
first effect of shame would have been calmed ; sorrow is 
not despair, and God has united them as brothers, so 
that one should never leave us alone with the other. 
Once the air of my room was free from that woman, my 
heart would have been comforted. There would have 
remained to me only repentance, and the angel of 
celestial pardon forbids repentance to kill. But no 
doubt, at least, I was cured for life ; debauch was for- 
ever driven from my threshold, and I would never again 
incur the feeling of horror with which her first visit had 
inspired me. 

But it happened quite otherwise. The struggle that 
was taking place in me, the poignant reflections that 
were overwhelming me, disgust, fear, wrath itself — for I 
felt a thousand things at one and the same time — all 
these fatal powers nailed me to my armchair; and, 
while I was thus a prey to the most dangerous delirium, 
the creature, leaning in front of the mirror, only 
thought of adjusting her dress as best she could, and 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


93 


arranged her hair with the most tranquil smile in the 
world. All that by-play of coquetry lasted over a quar- 
ter of an hour, during which I had almost come to for- 
get her. At last, at every sound she made, turning 
around impatiently, I begged her to leave me alone in 
a tone of wrath so marked that she was ready in a 
moment, and turned the door-knob as she threw me a 
kiss. 

At the same instant some one knocked at the outer 
door. I arose precipitately, and had only time to open 
for the creature a closet into which she rushed. Des- 
genais entered almost immediately with two young men 
of the neighborhood. 

Those great water currents that we find in the midst 
of seas resemble certain events in life. Fatality, 
Chance, Providence, what matters the name? Those 
who think they deny the one, by opposing to it the 
other, only abuse language. There is not, however, one 
of those very men who, in speaking of Caesar or of 
Napoleon, does not say naturally : “ He was the man of 
Providence.” They apparently believe that heroes 
alone are worthy of having Heaven concerned about 
them, and that the color of purple attracts the gods as 
it does bulls. 

As for what is decided here below by the most trifling 
things, as to what changes in our fortune are brought 
about by apparently the least important circumstances, 
there is not, to my mind, a deeper abyss for thought. 


94 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


It is with our ordinary actions as with little blunted 
arrows that we accustom ourselves to speed to the target, 
or almost so, so that we come to make of all these small 
results an abstract and regular being that we call our 
prudence or our will. Then a gust of wind passes, and, 
behold, the smallest, the lightest, the most futile of 
these arrows rises out of sight beyond the horizon into 
the immense bosom of God. 

What violence then takes possession of us ! What 
becomes of those phantoms of tranquil pride, the will 
and prudence? Force itself, that mistress of the world, 
that sword of man in the battle of life, it is in vain that 
we brandish it wrathfully, that we try to cover ourselves 
with it so as to escape a blow that threatens us ; an . 
invisible hand turns its edge aside, and the whole force 
of our effort, turned into the void, serves only to make 
us fall farther on. 

Thus, at the moment when I was aiming only at clear- 
ing myself of the error that I had been guilty of, per- 
haps even of punishing myself for it, at the very instant 
when a profound horror was taking possession of me, I 
learned that I had to bear a dangerous trial to which I 
succumbed. 

Desgenais was in the best of spirits ; stretching him- 
self on the sofa, he began with some bantering regarding 
my countenance, which, he said, had not slept well. 
As I was far from well disposed to bear his pleasantries, 

I curtly entreated him to spare me them. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


95 


He did not seem in a humor to pay any attention to 
this ; but, in the same tone, he approached the subject 
that brought him. He came to tell me that my mistress 
had not only had two lovers at the same time, but three, 
that is, that she had treated my rival as badly as me ; 
which the poor youth having learned, he made a terri- 
ble fuss about it, and all Paris knew it. I at first rather 
imperfectly understood what he said to me, not- having 
listened attentively ; but when, after having got him to 
repeat it as many as three times in the most minute 
detail, I had become thoroughly acquainted with the 
facts of this terrible history, I remained abashed and so 
stunned that I could not answer. My first impulse was 
to laugh at it, for I saw clearly that I had loved only the 
lowest of women ; but it was none the less true that I 
had loved her, and, to express it more clearly, that I 
loved her still. “Is it possible?” that is all I could 
find to say. 

Desgenais’s friends then confirmed all that he had 
said. It was in her own house that my mistress, taken 
by surprise between her two lovers, had on her part 
experienced a scene that everybody knew by heart. 
She was dishonored, obliged to leave Paris, unless she 
wanted to expose herself to the most cruel scandal. 

It was easy for me to see that in all these pleasantries 
there was a good share of ridicule thrown in regarding 
my duel about that same woman, my invincible passion 
for her, in fine, regarding my entire conduct in respect 


9 6 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


to her. To say that she merited the most odious names, 
that she was, after all, only a wretch who had, perhaps, 
done something a hundred times worse than what was 
known of her, was to make me feel bitterly that I was 
but a dupe like so many others. 

All that did not please me ; the young men, who took 
notice of it, were discreet about it ; but Desgenais had 
his plans ; he had taken it on himself as a task to heal 
me of my love, and he treated it pitilessly as a malady. 
A long friendship, founded on mutual services, gave him 
rights ; and, as his motive seemed to him laudable, he 
did not hesitate to exercise them. 

Not only, then, did he not spare me, but, from the 
moment that he saw my trouble and my shame, he did 
everything in the world to push me along that road as 
far as he could. My impatience soon became too obvious 
to allow him to continue ; he stopped then and adopted 
the part of silence, which irritated me even more. 

In my turn I put questions ; I walked hither and 
thither through the room. It had been unbearable to 
me to listen to that story being told; I would have 
liked some one to repeat it to me. I strov’e to as- 
sume sometimes a laughing air, sometimes a tranquil 
mien ; but it was in vain. Desgenais had suddenly 
become mute, after having shown himself as a most 
detestable gabbler. While I was walking with long 
strides, he was looking at me with indifference, and 
left me to toil in the room like a fox in the menagerie. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 97 

I cannot tell what I felt. A woman who had for so 
long a time been the idol of my heart, and who, since 
I had lost her, caused me such keen suffering, the only 
one whom I had loved, she whom I wanted to weep for 
until death, become all of a sudden shameless and 
brazen-faced, the subject of young men’s by-talk, of 
universal censure and scandal ! It seemed to me that 
I was feeling on my shoulder the impression of a red- 
hot iron, and that I was marked with a burning stigma. 

The more I reflected, the more I felt night thicken 
around me. From time to time I turned my head 
around and I perceived a glacial smile or a look of 
curiosity that was watching me. Desgenais did not 
leave me ; he clearly understood what he was doing : 
we knew each other for a long time ; he was well aware 
that I was capable of every folly, and that the exalta- 
tion of my character might draw me beyond all bounds, 
in any direction whatever, except in a single one. That 
is why he belittled my suffering and appealed from my 
head to my heart. 

When at last he saw me at the point to which he 
desired to bring me, he no longer delayed inflicting 
the last blow on me. “ Does the story displease you?” 
he said to me. “ Here is the best, which is the end 

of it. It is, my dear Octave, that the scene at ’s 

took place on a certain night when the moon was 
shining brightly ; now, while the two lovers were quar- 
reling their best at the lady’s house, and talking of 


9 8 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


cutting each other’s throats at the side of a good fire, 
it appears that in the street was seen a shadow which 
was moving very quietly, and which resembled you so 
very closely that it was concluded it was you. ’ ’ 

“Who has said so?” I replied; “who saw me in the 
street ? ’ ’ 

“Your mistress herself; she tells it to whoever 
wants to hear it, quite as gayly as we tell you her own 
history. She holds that you love her still, that you 

mount guard at her door, in fine, all that you 

think ; but it suffices for you to know that she speaks 
of it publicly.” 

I have never been able to lie, and, every time that 
it has happened to me to want to disguise the truth, 
my countenance has always betrayed me. Pride, the 
shame of acknowledging my weakness before witnesses, 
led me, however, to make an effort. “It is quite 
certain,” I said to myself, moreover, “ that I was in 
the street. But if I had known that my mistress was 
still worse than I believed her to be, no doubt I would 
not have been there.” At last I persuaded myself that 
I could not have been seen distinctly ; I endeavored to 
deny. The color mounted to my countenance with 
such force that I myself felt the uselessness of my feign- 
ing. Desgenais smiled at it. “Take care,” I said to 
him, “ take care ! let us not go too far ! ” 

I continued walking like a madman, I did not know 
whom to blame. It would have been right to laugh, 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


99 


and that was still more impossible. At the same time, 
evident signs taught me my failing ; I was convinced. 
“But did I know it?” I exclaimed to myself, “did I 
know that that wretched woman ’ ’ 

Desgenais bit his lip as if to signify : “ You knew it 
well enough.” 

I stopped short, at every moment stammering a 
ridiculous phrase. My blood, excited for the past 
quarter of an hour, began to beat in my temples with 
a force to which I was no longer equal. 

“I in the street, bathed in tears, in despair! and at 
that moment this meeting in her house ! What ! that 
very night jeered at by her ! she to jeer ! Verily, 
Desgenais ! are you not dreaming ? Is it true ? is it 
possible ? What do you know about it ? ” 

Thus speaking at random, I lost my head ; and 
during that time an insurmountable wrath dominated 
me ever more and more. At last I sat down exhausted, 
my hands trembling. 

“My friend,” said Desgenais to me, “do not take 
the matter seriously. This solitary life that you have 
been leading for the past two months is doing you 
much harm : I see it, you need diversions. Come 
this evening and have supper with us, and to-morrow, 
dinner in the country.” 

The tone in which he spoke these words did me more 
^ harm than all else. I felt that I was exciting his pity, 
J and that he was treating me as a child. 


IOO 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


Motionless, sitting apart, I was making vain efforts 
to gain some control over myself. “What ! ” I thought, 
“betrayed by that woman, poisoned with horrible advice, 
having nowhere found a refuge, neither in work nor in 
fatigue ; when I have, at the age of twenty, as my only 
safeguard against despair and corruption, a holy and 
fearful sorrow, O God ! it is this very sorrow, this 
sacred relic of my suffering, that they have just broken 
in my hands ! It is not my love, it is my despair that 
they insult ! To jeer ! she to jeer, when I am weep- 
ing ! ” That seemed to me incredible. All the memo- 
ries of the past flowed back to my heart when I thought 
of it. I seemed to see arise one after another the 
spectres of our nights of love ; they were leaning over 
a bottomless, eternal abyss, black as oblivion ; and 
over the depths of the abyss vibrated a sweet and 
mocking burst of laughter : “ Behold your reward ! ” 

If they had only told me that the world was mocking 
me, I would have replied : “So much the worse for it,” 
and would not have been otherwise grieved ; but they 
told me at the same time that my mistress was only 
a wretch. Thus, on the one hand, the ridicule was 
public, averred, corroborated by two witnesses who, 
before relating what they had seen, could not fail to 
say on what occasion : the world was right, I was 
wrong; and, on the other hand, what answer could I 
make to it? on what could I depend? wherein shut 
myself up ? what do, when the centre of my life, my 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


IOI 


heart itself, was ruined, slain, annihilated ? What am 
I saying? when that woman, for whom I would have 
braved everything, ridicule as well as blame, for whom 
I would have let a mountain of misery be heaped upon 
me ; when that woman, whom I loved, and who loved 
another, and whom I did not ask to love me, of whom 
I wanted nothing but permission to weep at her door, 
nothing but, far from her, to devote my youth to her 
memory, and to write her name, her name only, on the 

tomb of my hopes ! Ah ! when I thought of it I 

felt myself dying ; it was that woman who jeered me ; 
it was she who, the first, pointed a finger at me, pointed 
me out to that idle multitude, to that empty and irksome 
people, that goes about chuckling around all that con- 
temns it and forgets it ; it was she, it was from her lips 
so often sealed to mine, it was from that body, from 
that soul of my life, my flesh and my blood, it was 
thence that came the insult, yes, the last of all, the 
most cowardly and the most bitter, laughter without 
pity, that spits in the face of grief. 

The more I penetrated into my thoughts, the more my 
wrath increased. Is it wrath I must call it? for I know 
not what name is borne by the feeling that was agitating 
me. What is certain is that a disordered thirst for ven- 
geance gained the upper hand of me. And how be 
avenged on a woman ? I would have paid whatever was 
asked to have at my disposal a weapon that could strike 
her down; but what weapon? I had none, not even 


102 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


that which she had used ; I could not answer her in her 
own language. 

Suddenly I perceived a shadow behind the curtain of 
the glass door ; it was the creature who was waiting in 
the closet. 

I had forgotten her. ‘ ‘ Listen ! ” I exclaimed to my- 
self, as I arose in a transport; “I have loved, I have 
loved like a madman, like a simpleton. I have deserved 
all the ridicule that you desire. But, by Heaven ! I 
must show you something which will prove to you that 
I am not yet so stupid as you believe. * ’ 

As I said this I struck my foot against the glass door, 
which gave way ; I showed them that girl who had been 
cowering in a corner. 

“ Go in there, then,” I said to Desgenais; “you who 
find me madly in love with one woman and who love 
only the girls, do you not see your supreme wisdom 
stretched out there in that armchair? Ask her if my 

entire night has been spent under ’s windows; 

she will tell you something about it. But that is not 
all,” I added, “it is not all that I have to tell you. 
You have a supper this evening, to-morrow a country- 
party ; I am going, and believe me, for I will not leave 
you from now until then. We will not separate, we are 
going to spend the day together ; you will have fencing, 
cards, dice, punch, what you will, but you will not get 
away from it. Are you with me ? Iam at your service ; 
done ! I wanted to make my heart the mausoleum of 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


103 


my love ; but I will cast my love into another tomb, O 
God of Justice ! when I ought to bury it in my heart.” 

At these words I sat down again, while they went into 
the closet, and I felt how the indignation that comforts 
itself may give us joy. As for him who may be aston- 
ished that from that day I completely changed my life, 
he does not know man’s heart, and he does not know 
that one may hesitate twenty years about taking a step, 
but will not retrace it once he has taken it. 


11 


Apprenticeship in debauch is like a vertigo : in it, at 
first one experiences an indescribable terror mingled 
with pleasure, as if on a high tower. While shameful 
and secret libertinage degrades the noblest man, in free 
and bold disorder, in what we may call debauch in 
broad daylight, there is some grandeur, even to the most 
depraved. He who, at nightfall, goes off, his cloak over 
his nose, incognito, to soil his life and clandestinely to 
throw off the hypocrisy of the day, resembles an Italian 
who strikes his enemy from behind, not daring to pro- 
voke him to a duel. Assassination lurks in boundary 
corners and in expectation of night; while, in the chaser 
after noisy orgies, one would almost conceive a warrior ; it 


104 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


is something that smacks of fight, an appearance of superb 
contest. “Everybody does it, and keeps it quiet; do it, 
and do not keep it quiet.” Thus speaks Pride, and, once 
this cuirass is put on, it is the sun that shines there again. 

It is related that Damocles saw a sword hanging over 
his head; it is thus that libertines seem to have over 
them a something indescribable which is incessantly 
calling out to them: “Go, go ever; I am holding on 
to a thread.” Those masquerade carriages that one 
sees in Carnival time are the faithful image of their 
life. A broken-down coach, open to the four winds, 
flamboyant torches illuminating powdered heads ; those 
laugh, these sing ; in the midst move figures somewhat 
like women : they are indeed remains of women, with 
almost human semblance. They are caressed, they are 
insulted ; one knows neither their names, nor who they 
are. All that floats and hovers under the flaming rosin, 
in an intoxication that thinks of nothing, and over 
which, it is said, a God watches. They have the appear- 
ance, at moments, of leaning over and embracing ; 
there is one of them that has fallen in a jolt ; what 
matters it? one comes from thence, one goes thither, 
and the horses gallop. 

But if the first impulse is astonishment, the second is 
horror, and the third pity. There is there, in effect, 
so much force, or rather so strange an abuse of force, 
that it often happens that the noblest characters and 
the finest organizations allow themselves to be caught 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


105 

in it. That seems to them bold and dangerous ; they 
thus make themselves prodigal of themselves ; they 
attach themselves to debauch like Mazeppa to his wild 
beast ; they bind themselves fast to it, they make them- 
selves Centaurs ; and they see neither the pathway ol 
blood marked by the shreds of their flesh on the trees, 
nor the eyes of the red-stained wolves that follow in 
their track, nor the desert, nor the crows. 

Launched on that life by the circumstances that I 
have mentioned, now I have to tell what I saw there. 

The first time that I had a close view of those noto- 
rious assemblies that we call theatrical masked balls, 
I had heard the debauches of the Regency spoken of, 
and a queen of France disguised as a dealer in violets. 
There I found dealers in violets disguised as sutlers. I 
expected libertinism, but in truth there is none of it 
there. Filth, blows, and girls dead drunk on broken 
bottles, is not libertinism. 

The first time that I saw table debauches, I had heard 
mention made of the suppers of Heliogabalus, and of 
a Grecian philosopher who had made of the pleasures 
of the senses a sort of natural religion. I expected 
something like forgetfulness, if not like joy; I found 
there what is worst in the world, tedium trying to live, 
and Englishmen who said to themselves: “I do this 
or that, then I amuse myself. I have paid so many 
gold pieces, therefore I enjoy so much pleasure. ’ ’ And 
they spend their life on this millstone. 


io6 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


The first time that I saw courtesans, I had heard men- 
tion made of Aspasia, who sat down on Alcibiades’ knee 
while discussing with Socrates. I expected something 
giddy, insolent, but yet gay, brave, and vivacious, some- 
thing like the sparkling of champagne; I found a yawn- 
ing mouth, a staring eye, and crooked hands. 

The first time that I saw titled courtesans, I had 
read Boccaccio and Bandello ; above all, I had read 
Shakespeare. I had dreamt of those frisky beauties, of 
those cherubs of hell, of those female high livers full 
of graceful movement to whom the cavaliers of the 
Decameron offer holy water as they are going away 
from Mass. I had a thousand times sketched those 
heads so poetically silly, so inventive in their audacity, 
of those mad-brained mistresses that unfold to you a 
whole romance in a glance, and that walk in life only 
by waves and shocks, like undulating sirens. I remem- 
bered those fairies of the Nouvelles Nouvelles, who are 
ever tipsy from love, if they are not drunk from it. I 
found female scribblers, arrangers of rendezvous, setters 
of precise hours, who know only how to lie to strangers 
and to bury their baseness in their hypocrisy, and who 
see in all that only something to give themselves up 
to and to forget. 

The first time that I entered a gambling house, I had 
heard mention made of oceans of gold, of fortunes made 
in a quarter of an hour, and of a lord of the court of 
Henri IV. who won on one card a hundred thousand 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


107 


crowns at the cost of his coat. I found a wardrobe 
dealer’s where workmen, who have only a single shirt, 
hire a coat at twenty sous an evening, gendarmes seated 
at the door, and famished men gambling a slice of 
bread against a pistol shot. 

The first time that I saw any assembly whatever, 
public or not, open to any one of the thirty thousand 
women who, in Paris, are permitted to sell themselves, 
I had heard mention made of the saturnalia of all times, 
of all the orgies possible, from Babylon to Rome, from 
the temple of Priapus to the Parc-aux-Cerfs, and on the 
threshold of the door I had always seen a single word 
written: “Pleasure.” No longer do I find in this 
time but a single word : “ Prostitution ; ” and I have 
always seen it there ineffaceable, not engraved on that 
proud metal which bears the color of the sun, but on 
the palest of all, that which the cold light of night 
seems to have tinted with its wan rays, silver. 

The first time that I saw the people it was on a 

frightful morning, on an Ash Wednesday, on the slope 
of La Courtille. Since the evening before, a fine and 
glacial rain was falling ; the streets were pools of mud. 
The masquerade carriages were filing off pell-mell, 
bumping, rubbing against one another, between two 
long hedges of hideous men and women, standing on 
the sidewalk. This wall of sinister spectators had, in 
their wine-reddened eyes, a tiger hatred. For the dis- 
tance of a league all grumbled, whilst the carriage wheels 


io8 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


grazed their breasts without making them move a step 
backwards. I was standing on the bench, the carriage 
being open ; from time to time a man in rags came 
out of the hedge, vomited a torrent of insults in our 
face, then threw a cloud of flour at us. Ere long we 
received mud ; yet we continued to mount, reaching 
L’lle-d’ Amour and the pretty wood of Romainville, 
where so many sweet embraces on the grass were for- 
merly given. One of our friends, seated on the bench, 
at the risk of being killed, fell on the pavement. The 
people rushed at him to club him to death : it was 
necessary to run thither and surround him. One of 
the trumpeters, who preceded us on horseback, was hit 
with a paving-stone on the shoulder : flour failed. I had 
never heard mention made of anything like that. 

I began to understand the age and to know in what 
time we are living. 


in 


Desgenais had organized a gathering of young men 
at his country-house. The best wines, a splendid table, 
cards, dancing, horse-racing, nothing was wanting to 
it. Desgenais was rich and of great magnificence. He 
had an old-time hospitality with manners of the pres- 
ent time. Moreover, one found the best books at his 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


109 

house ; his conversation was that of an educated and 
well-bred man. That man was a problem. 

I had brought to his house a taciturn humor that 
nothing could overcome ; he respected it scrupulously. 
I did not answer his questions, he asked me no more ; 
the important thing to him was that I had forgotten my 
mistress. Yet I went to the hunt, I showed myself at 
table as good a guest as the others; he did not ask 
more of me. 

There are not wanting in the world such folks, who 
take it to heart to do you a service, and who would 
remorselessly throw the heaviest paving-stone at you 
to crush the fly that is annoying you. They are anx- 
ious only to keep you from doing evil, that is, they 
are uneasy unless they have made you like them- 
selves. Having attained this end, no matter by what 
means, they rub their hands, and the idea does not 
occur to them that you might have fallen from bad to 
worse ; all that from honest friendship. 

One of the great misfortunes of inexperienced youth 
is to picture the world according to the first objects 
that strike it ; but, it must be acknowledged, there 
is also a race of very unfortunate men : they are those 
who, in such case, are always there to say to youth : 
“You are right in believing in evil, and we know' 
what there is of it. ” I have heard, for example, some- 
thing singular spoken of: it was, as it were, a mean 
between good and evil, a certain arrangement between 


I 10 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


heartless women and men worthy of them ; they called 
that passing sentiment. They spoke of it as of a steam 
engine invented by a coach-builder or a building con- 
tractor. They said to me: “ People are agreed on 
this or on that, people pronounce such phrases as call 
for such others in answer, people write letters in such 
a way, people kneel in such another.” All that was 
regulated like a parade ; those good people had gray 
hair. 

That made me laugh. Unfortunately for me, I can- 
not tell a woman whom I despise that I love her, even 
while knowing that it is conventional and that she will 
not be misled thereby. I have never bent my knee 
without yielding my heart. So, that class of women 
whom we call easy, is unknown to me, or, if I have 
allowed myself to be taken with them, it is without 
knowing it and from simplicity. 

I understand that one may put his soul aside, but not 
that one touches it. That there may be pride in saying 
so, is possible ; I mean neither to boast nor to belittle 
myself. I hate, above all, women who laugh at love 
and allow them to love me in turn ; there will never be 
any dispute between us. 

Those women are far below courtesans : courtesans 
may lie, and those women also ; but courtesans can 
love, and those women cannot. I remember a woman 
who loved me, and who told a man, three times richer 
than I, with whom she was living : “You weary me, I 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


hi 


am going to find my lover.” That girl was worth more 
than many others whom one does not pay. 

I spent the entire season at Desgenais’, where I 
learned that my mistress had gone away, and that she 
had left France ; this news gave to my heart a languor 
that has never left me. 

At the sight of that world so new to me which I had 
around me in that country, I felt myself at first taken 
with an odd sort of curiosity, sad and profound, that 
made me look crosswise like a skittish horse. This is 
the first thing that gave occasion to it. Desgenais had 
then a very pretty mistress, who loved him dearly : one 
evening as I was walking with him, I said to him that I 
found her such as she was, that is, admirable, as well 
for her beauty as for her attachment to him. In short, 
I eulogized her with warmth, and gave him to under- 
stand that he ought to be happy on her account. 

He made no answer. It was his way, and I knew 
him to be the driest of men. Night having come, and 
each having retired, a quarter of an hour after I had 
gone to bed I heard a knocking on my door. I called 
out to my visitor to come in, thinking it was some one 
troubled with insomnia. 

I saw a woman enter, paler than death, half-naked 
and with a bouquet in her hand. She came and pre- 
sented to me her bouquet; a piece of paper was attached 
to it, on which I found these few words : “ To Octave, 
his friend Desgenais, on account of revenge.” 


1 1 2 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


I had no sooner read that than a flash crossed my 
mind. I understood all that there was in this action of 
Desgenais, in thus sending me his mistress and making 
her a sort of Turkish present to me, from some words I 
had said to him. From the character that I knew him 
to have, there was in that neither ostentation of gener- 
osity nor trait of rakishness ; there was only a lesson. 
That woman loved him ; I had praised her to him, and 
he wanted to teach me not to love her, whether I should 
take her or refuse her. 

That set me thinking ; that poor girl wept, and dared 
not wipe her tears, afraid lest I should notice them. 
With what had he threatened her so as to make her 
come? I did not know. “Mademoiselle,” I said to 
her, “ you need not grieve. Go to your room and fear 
nothing.” She answered that, if she left my room 
before next morning, Desgenais would send her back 
to Paris ; that her mother was poor, and that she could 
not make up her mind to it. “Very well,” I said to 
her, “ your mother is poor, probably you are also, so 
that you would obey Desgenais if I wished. You are 
beautiful, and that might tempt me. But you are 
weeping, and, your tears not being for me, I have 
only to do the rest. Go, and I will see to preventing 
your being sent back to Paris. ’ ’ 

A thing that is peculiar to me is that meditation, 
which, with the greater number, is a firm and con- 
stant quality of the mind, is in me only an instinct 


^art (tfljapter 


I saw a woman enter , paler than death , half -naked and 
with a bouquet in her hand. She came and presented to 
me her bouquet ; a piece of paper was attached to it , on 
which I found these few words: “ To Octave , his friend 
Desgenais, on account of revenge 


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CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


113 

independent of my will, which seizes me by fits like a 
violent passion. It comes to me at intervals, at its time, 
in spite of myself, and no matter where. But wherever 
it comes, I am powerless against it. It draws me 
whither it seems good to it and on what road it 
pleases. 

That woman having left, I assumed a sitting posture. 
“My friend,” I said to myself, “behold what God 
sends you. If Desgenais had not wanted to give you 
his mistress, he was not perhaps mistaken in believing 
that you would have fallen in love with her. 

“ Have you looked at her aright ? A sublime and 
divine mystery was accomplished in the entrails that 
conceived her. Such a being costs nature her most 
vigilant maternal regard ; yet the man who wants to 
cure you has found nothing better than to force you 
to her lips in order there to unlearn how to love. 

“How is that done ? Others than you have no doubt 
admired her, but they ran no risk ; she could try on 
them all the seductions that she wished ; you alone 
were in danger. 

“ It must be, however, whatever be his life, that this 
Desgenais has a heart, since he lives. In what does he 
differ from you ? He is a man who believes in nothing, 
fears nothing, who has neither care nor weariness, per- 
haps, and it is clear that a slight prick on the heel 
would fill him with terror ; for, if his body abandoned 
him, what would become of him? There is nothing 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


114 

living in him but the body. What, then, is this crea- 
ture who treats his soul as the Flagellants treat their 
flesh ? Is it that one can live without a head ? 

“Think of that. There is a man who holds in his 
arms the most beautiful woman in the world ; he is 
young and ardent ; he finds her beautiful, he tells her 
so ; she answers that she loves him. Thereupon, some 
one slaps him on the shoulder and says to him : ‘ She 
is dissolute.’ Nothing more; he is sure of her. If 
one had said to him: ‘ She is a poisoner,’ he would, 
perhaps, have loved her, he would not give her a single 
kiss the less; but she is a jade, and there will be no 
more question of love than of the star Saturn. 

“ What, then, is that word ? a just, merited, positive, 
dishonoring, understood word. But, in fine, what? a 
word, nevertheless. Does one kill a body with a word ? 

“And if you, aye ! you, love that body? One pours 
out a glass of wine for you, and one says to you : 4 Do 
not love that, one gets four of them for six francs. 
And if you become tipsy?’ 

44 But this Desgenais loves his mistress, since he pays 
her ; he has, then, a particular way of loving ? No, 
he has nothing of the sort ; his way of loving is not 
love, and he feels it no more for the woman who merits 
it than for her who is unworthy of it. He loves no 
one, that is all. 

“Who, then, has brought him to that? was he born 
thus, or has he become so ? To love is as natural as to 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


115 

drink and to eat. He is not a man. Is he an abor- 
tion or a giant ? What ! always sure of that impassible 
body? Truly, even to casting himself without danger 
into the arms of a woman who loves him. What ! 
without blanching? Never any other exchange than 
gold for flesh ? What a feast, then, is his life, and what 
brewings does one drink there in its cups? Behold 
him, at thirty, like old Mithridates ; the poisons of 
vipers are his friends and intimates. 

‘ 4 There is a great secret in that, my boy, a key to 
take hold of. On whatever reasonings one may support 
debauch, one will prove that it is natural one day, one 
hour, this evening, but not to-morrow, or every day. 
There is not a people on earth that has not considered 
woman either as man’s companion and consolation, or 
as the sacred instrument of his life, and, under both 
these forms, who has not honored her. Yet, behold 
an armed warrior who jumps into the abyss that God 
has dug with His own hands between man and animal ; 
it would be as well to deny speech. What mute Titan 
is there, then, who would dare trample the love of the 
mind under the kisses of the body, and to plant on the 
lips the stigma that makes the brute, the seal of eternal 
silence ? 

“ There is in that a word worth knowing. There 
whistles thereunder the wind of those mournful forests 
that we call secret corporations, one of those mysteries 
that the angels of destruction whisper in one another’s 


n6 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


ear, when night descends on the earth. That man is 
worse or better than God has made him. His entrails 
are like those of sterile women : either nature has only 
blocked them out, or some poisonous herb was distilled 
into them in the dark. 

“ Well, neither work nor study has been able to cure 
you, my friend. To forget and to learn, be that thy 
motto. You were turning over the leaves of dead 
books ; you are too young for ruins. Look about you, 
the pale troop of men surrounds you. The sphinxes’ 
eyes sparkle among the divine hieroglyphics ; decipher 
the book of life ! Courage, scholar, jump into the Styx, 
the invulnerable river, and may its funereal waves lead 
you to death or to God. ’ ’ 


IV 


“All that there was of good in that, supposing that 
there could be any, is that these false pleasures were 
seeds of sorrow and bitterness that fatigued me so that 
I could bear them no longer.” Such are the simple 
words that were said, in regard to his youth, by the 
most manlike man who has ever been, St. Augustine. 
Of those who have done as he did, few would say these 
words, all have them in their hearts ; I find no others 
i&jnine. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


117 

Having returned to Paris, in the month of December, 
after the season, I spent the winter in pleasure parties, 
in masquerades, in suppers, rarely leaving Desgenais, 
who was delighted with me ; I was scarcely so. The 
more I went about, the more care I felt in me. It 
seemed to me, at the end of a very short time, that 
this world so strange, which at first sight had appeared 
to me an abyss, was becoming contracted, so to say, 
at each step ; where I had believed I had seen a 
spectre, in proportion as I advanced, I saw only a 
shadow. 

Desgenais asked me what was the matter with me. 
“And you,” I said to him, “what ails you? Do you 
recall any dead relative ? Have you not some wound 
that humidity opens afresh ?’ ’ 

Then it sometimes seemed to me that he heard me 
without answering. We threw ourselves on a table, 
drinking until our heads swam ; in the middle of the 
night we took post-horses, and went to breakfast ten 
or twelve leagues away in the country ; on returning, 
to the bath, thence to table, thence to play, thence to 

bed ; and when I was at the side of mine then I 

pushed the door-bolt, I fell on my knees and I wept. 
That was my evening prayer. 

Strange thing ! I took pride in passing for what in 
reality I was not at all ; I boasted of doing worse than 
I was doing, and I found an odd pleasure, mingled with 
sorrow, in that charlatanism. When I had really done 


n8 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


what I related, I felt only weariness ; but when I 
invented some folly, such as a story of debauch or the 
recital of an orgie at which I had not attended, it 
seemed to me that my heart was more satisfied, I know 
not why. 

What did me most harm was when, at a pleasure 
party, we went into some place in the environs of Paris 
where I had formerly been with my mistress. I became 
stupid, I went off alone, apart, looking at the shrubs 
and the trunks of trees with unbounded bitterness, even 
kicking them as if to reduce them to dust. Then I 
returned, repeating a hundred times in succession be- 
tween my teeth : “ God scarcely loves me, God scarcely 
loves me ! ’ 1 I remained then for hours without speak- 
ing. 

That fatal idea, that truth is nudity, returned to me 
on every occasion. “The world,” I said to myself, 
“calls its varnishing, virtue; its rosary, religion; its 
trailing cloak, propriety. Honor and morality are its 
chambermaids ; it drinks in its wine the tears of the 
poor in spirit who believe in it ; it walks abroad with 
downcast eyes as long as the sun is in the heavens ; it 
goes to church, to the ball, to the assemblies, and when 
evening comes it unties its robe, and one perceives a 
naked bacchanalian with two goat’s feet.” 

But while speaking thus, I horrified myself ; for I felt 
that, if the body was under the coat, the skeleton was 
under the body. “Is it possible that that is all?” I 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


Il 9 

asked myself in spite of myself. Then I returned to the 
city, I met on my way a pretty little girl holding her 
mother’s arm, I followed her with my eyes as I sighed, 
and I became again, as it were, a child. 

Though I had assumed every-day customs with my 
friends, and though we had regulated our disorder, I 
did not neglect going into society. The sight of 
women caused me unendurable trouble ; I touched their 
hands only in trembling. My course was taken never 
to love again. Yet I returned on a certain evening 
from a ball with my heart so sick that I felt that it 
was love. I found myself at supper beside a woman, 
the most charming and the most distinguished whose 
memory has remained to me. When I shut my eyes to 
go to sleep, I saw her before me. I believed myself 
lost ; I resolved at once not to meet her again, to shun 
all the places to which I knew that she was going. 
This sort of fever lasted a fortnight, during which I 
remained almost constantly stretched on my sofa, end- 
lessly recalling, in spite of myself, even the slightest 
words that I had exchanged with her. 

As there is no place under heaven where one is con- 
cerned with his neighbor so much as at Paris, not a very 
long time elapsed before the people of my acquaintance, 
who met me with Desgenais, had declared that I was 
the greatest of libertines. In that I admired the intelli- 
gence of the world ; in proportion as I had passed for a 
ninny and a novice at the time of my rupture with my 


120 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


mistress, so I passed now for being hard-hearted and 
obdurate. People came to say to me that it was very 
clear I never loved that woman, that I was no doubt 
making a play of love, which was great praise that 
people thought they were bestowing on me ; and the 
worst of the matter is, that I was puffed up with vanity 
so wretched, that it delighted me. 

My pretension was to pass for being case-hardened, 
at the same time that I was full of desires and that my 
exalted imagination was carrying me beyond all bounds. 
I began to say that I could not take any stock in women ; 
my head spent itself in chimeras that I said I preferred 
to the reality. At last, my only pleasure was to mis- 
represent myself. It sufficed that a thought be extraor- 
dinary, that it shock common sense, for me at once 
to make myself its champion, at the risk of advancing 
most censurable opinions. 

My greatest fault was the imitating of everything that 
struck me, not by reason of its beauty, but of its strange- 
ness, and, not wishing to confess myself an imitator, I 
lost myself in exaggeration, so as to appear original. 
To my taste, nothing was good, or even passable ; 
nothing was worth the trouble of a turn of the head ; 
yet, as soon as I warmed up to a discussion, it appeared 
as if there was not in the French language any expres- 
sion sufficiently bombastic to praise what I upheld ; 
but it was sufficient to side with me to cool all my 
ardor. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


1 2 I 


This was a natural sequel to my conduct. Disgusted 
with the life that I was leading, I did not, however, 
want to change it : 


Simigliante a quella ’nferna 
Che non pud trovar posa in su le piume, 

Ma con dar volta suo dolore scherma. 

Dante. 

Thus I tormented my mind to deceive it, and I fell into 
all sorts of caprices to escape from myself. 

But while my vanity was thus occupied, my heart was 
suffering, so that there was almost constantly in me one 
man who was laughing and another who was weeping. 
It was like a perpetual rebound from my head to my 
heart. My own banterings sometimes gave me extreme 
pain, and my deepest sorrows gave me a desire to burst 
out laughing. 

A man boasted one day of being proof against super- 
stitious fears and of not being afraid of anything ; his 
friends put a human skeleton in his bed, then posted 
themselves in an adjoining room to trap him when he 
came in. They heard no noise ; but, next morning, 
when they entered his room, they found him fixed in a 
sitting posture and playing with the bones : he had lost 
his reason. 

There was in me something like to that man, if it 
was only that my favorite bonelets were those of a 


122 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


well - beloved skeleton ; they were the ruins of my 
love, all that remained to me of the past. 

It must not be said, however, that in all that dis- 
order there were not good moments. Desgenais’ com- 
panions were young men of distinction, a goodly 
number were artists. We sometimes spent delightful 
evenings together, under the pretext of playing the 
libertine. One of them was then taken with a pretty 
singer who charmed us with her sweet and melancholy 
voice. How often we remained, seated in a circle, to 
listen to her, while the table was being set ! How 
often one of us, at the moment when the flasks were 
uncorked, held in the hand a volume by Lamartine 
and read in a voice full of emotion ! You should have 
seen then how every other thought disappeared. The 
hours flew during that time ; and, when we sat down 
to table, what singular libertines we made ! we said not 
a word, and we had tears in our eyes. 

Desgenais especially, habitually the coldest and driest 
of men, was incredible in those days ; he gave himself 
up to opinions so extraordinary that one would have 
called him a poet in delirium. But, after those expan- 
sions, it happened that he would feel himself seized 
with a furious joy. He broke everything as soon as 
the wine had warmed him; the genius of destruction 
emerged from his head fully armed; and I have seen 
him, sometimes, in the midst of his follies, dashing a chair 
at a closed window with such uproar as to make one hide. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


123 


I could not help making that strange man a subject of 
study. He appeared to me as the marked type of a 
class of men who must exist somewhere, but who were 
unknown to me. One knew not, when he was acting, 
whether it was the despair of a sick man or the whim 
of a spoiled child. 

He showed himself off particularly on feast days in 
a state of nervous excitement that drove him to con- 
duct himself like a veritable school-boy. His com- 
posure then would make one laugh to split one’s sides. 
He persuaded me one day to go out with him on foot, 
both of us, alone, at dusk, muffled up in grotesque cos- 
tumes, with masks and musical instruments. We prom- 
enaded thus all night, gravely, amid the most frightful 
charivari. We found a driver of a coach for hire asleep 
on his seat ; we unyoked the horses ; after which, feign- 
ing to be leaving a ball, we called him with loud shouts. 
The driver awoke, and at the first crack of the whip 
that he gave, his horses started on a trot, leaving him 
thus perched on his seat. We were the same evening 
in the Champs-Elysees ; Desgenais, seeing another car- 
riage pass, stopped it, neither more nor less than a 
robber; he intimidated the driver by his threats, and 
forced him to get down and stretch himself flat on his 
belly. It was a play for which one would risk one’s life. 
He opened the carriage, however, and within we found 
a young man and a woman, motionless from fright. He 
told me then to imitate him, and, having opened both 


124 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


doors, we began to enter by the one and leave by the 
other, so that in the darkness the poor people in the 
carriage believed it was a procession of bandits. 

I picture to myself that men who say that the world 
gives experience ought to be very much astonished that 
people believe them. The world is only whirls, and 
between these whirls there is no relation ; everything 
goes off in flocks, like flights of birds. The different 
quarters of a city do not even resemble one another, 
and, to any one of the Chaussee-d’Antin, there is as 
much to be learned in Le Marais as in Lisbon. It is 
only true that these different whirls have been trav- 
ersed, since the world has existed, by seven person- 
ages ever the same : the first is called hope ; the 
second, conscience ; the third, opinion ; the fourth, 
envy; the fifth, sorrow; the sixth, pride; and the 
seventh is called man. 

We were, then, my companions and I, a flight of 
birds, and we remained together until the spring-time, 
sometimes playing, sometimes running 

“ But,” the reader will say, “ in the midst of all that, 
what women had you ? In that I do not see debauch 
in person.” 

O creatures who bore the name of women, and who 
have passed like dreams in a life that was itself only a 
dream, what shall I say of you? Where there never 
was the shadow of a hope, can it be that there would 
be some memory? Wherein shall I find memories of 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


I2 5 

you ? What is there more mute in the human memory ? 
What is there more forgotten than you? 

If women must be spoken of, I will cite two of them ; 
here is one : 

I ask you, what would you have a poor seamstress do, 
young and pretty, eighteen years old, and consequently 
having desires ; having a novel on her desk, which 
treats only of love ; knowing nothing, having no idea 
of morality ; sewing forever at a window before which, 
by order of the police, processions no longer pass, but 
in front of which stroll every evening a dozen licensed 
girls, recognized by the same police ; what would you 
have her do when, after having wearied her hands and 
her eyes during a whole day on a dress or a hat, she 
leans on her elbows for a moment at that window at 
nightfall? That dress which she has sewed, that hat 
which she has trimmed with her poor and honest 
hands, to get the wherewith to have supper at her 
house, she sees them pass on the head and on the 
body of a public girl. Thirty times a day there stops 
a hired carriage at her door, and there comes out of 
it a prostitute numbered like the hack that trundles 
her, who comes with a disdainful air to make faces 
in front of a mirror, to try on, to take off and to 
put on again ten times that sad and patient work of 
her vigils. She sees that girl take from her pocket 
six gold pieces, she who has one a week ; she looks 
at her from head to foot, she examines her decking, 


126 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


she follows her as far as her carriage ; and then, what 
would you? when the night is quite dark, on an even- 
ing when work fails, when her mother is sick, she opens 
her door, stretches out her hand, and stops a passer-by. 

Such was the history of a girl whom I have known. 
She knew a little how to play the piano, a little how 
to count, a little how to draw, even a little history and 
grammar, and so a little of everything. How often I 
looked with poignant compassion at that rough model 
of nature, mutilated still further by society ! How 
often I followed, in that depth of night, the pale and 
vacillating glimmers of a suffering and aborted spark ! 
How often I tried to relight some dead coals under 
those poor ashes ! Alas ! her long hair was in reality 
of the color of ashes, and we called her Cendrillon. 

I was not rich enough to give her masters ; Des- 
genais, following my advice, interested himself in that 
creature ; he made her learn anew all of which she had 
the elements. But she was never able to make decided 
progress in anything : as soon as her master had left, 
she crossed her arms and remained thus for whole hours, 
looking through the window-panes. What days ! what 
misery ! I threatened one day, if she did not work, to 
leave her without money ; she set silently to work, and 
I learned a short time afterwards that she went out 
by stealth. Whither did she go? God knows. I 
entreated her, before she left, to embroider a purse 
for me ; I kept that sad relic for a long time ; it 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


127 

was hung up in my room as one of the gloomiest 
monuments of all that is ruin here below. 

Now here is another : 

It was about ten o’clock in the evening, when, after 
a whole day of excitement and fatigue, we betook our- 
selves to Desgenais’, he had preceded us by some 
hours to make his preparations. The orchestra was 
already placed, and the parlor full on our arrival. 

Most of the dancers were theatre -girls ; it was ex- 
plained to me why they were worth more than others ; 
it was that everybody snatches at them. 

Scarcely had I entered when I threw myself into the 
whirl of the waltz. This truly delightful exercise has 
always been dear to me ; I know of no other more 
noble, nor that is more worthy in every respect of a 
pretty woman and a young man ; all dances, compared 
with that one, are only insipid conventionalities or 
pretexts for the most insignificant conversations. To 
hold a woman in one’s arms for half an hour is truly 
to possess her in a certain sense, and to drag her along 
thus, palpitating in spite of herself, and not without 
some risk, so that one could not say whether one pro- 
tects or forces her. Some give themselves up then with 
such voluptuous shame, with such sweet and pure aban- 
donment, that one does not know whether what one 
feels near them is desire or fear, and whether, in press- 
ing them to one’s heart, one would swoon away or 
would break them like reeds. Germany, where this 


128 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


dance was invented, is certainly a country where one 
loves. 

I held in my arms a superb dancer of an Italian 
theatre, who had come to Paris for the Carnival; she 
was in bacchanalian costume, with a panther-skin robe. 
Never have I seen anything so languishing as that 
creature. She was tall and thin, and, while waltzing 
with extreme rapidity, she had the appearance of drag- 
ging; on seeing her, one would have said that she 
fatigued her waltzer ; but one did not feel her, she ran 
as if by enchantment. 

On her bosom was an enormous bouquet, whose per- 
fumes intoxicated me in spite of myself. At the slightest 
movement of my arm, I felt her bend like a convolvulus 
of the Indies, full of a softness so sweet and so sympa- 
thetic that she enfolded me like a sail of embalmed 
silk. At each turn one scarcely heard a slight rubbing 
of her necklace on her metal girdle; she moved so 
divinely that I believed I saw a beautiful star, and all 
that with a smile, like a fairy that is going to fly away. 
The waltz music, tender and voluptuous, appeared as if 
emerging from her lips, whilst her head, loaded with a 
forest of black hair braided in plaits, inclined backwards, 
as if her neck were too weak to carry it. 

When the waltz was ended I threw myself on a chair 
at the end of a boudoir; my heart beat, I was beside 
myself. “O God!” I exclaimed to myself, “how is 
that possible ? O superb monster ! O beautiful reptile ! 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


129 


sweet serpent, with your supple and spotted skin ! how 
you entwine, how you undulate. How your eousin 
the Serpent has taught you to coil around the Tree 
of Life, with the apple on your lips ! O Melusine ! 
O Melusine ! the hearts of men are yours. You know 
it well, enchantress, with the mellow languor that has 
not the air of doubting it ! You know well that you 
are killing, you know well that you are drowning, 
you know well that one is going to suffer when one has 
touched you; you know that one dies of your smiles, 
of the perfume of your flowers, of contact with your 
delights : that is why you give yourself up with such 
softness ; that is why your smile is so sweet, your flowers 
so fresh ; that is why you pose your arm so sweetly on 
our shoulder. O God ! O God ! what, then, do you 
desire of us?” 

Professor Halle has said a terrible word : “ Woman is 
the nervous part of humanity, and man the muscular 
part.” Humboldt himself, that serious scholar, has said 
that around the human nerves is an invisible atmos- 
phere. I do not speak of the dreamers who follow the 
zigzag flight of Spallanzani’s bats, and who think they 
have found a sixth sense in nature. However that 
may be, the mysteries of the nature that creates us, 
rocks us, kills us, are sufficiently awful, and its powers 
too profound, without making it necessary to thicken 
the darkness that surrounds us. But who is the man 
who thinks he has lived if he denies the power of 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


130 

woman? if he has never left a beautiful dancer with 
trembling hands ? if he has never felt that indescribable, 
indefinable, that enervating magnetism which, in the 
midst of a ball, at the noise of the instruments, at the 
warmth that pales the lustres, comes by degrees from a 
young woman, electrifies her, and frolics around her 
like the perfume of aloes on the censer that is swung in 
the wind? 

I was stricken with a profound stupor. That such an 
intoxication exists when one loves, was not new to me : 
I knew what that aureole was that the well-beloved 
radiates. But to excite such heart-beatings, to call up 
such phantoms, with nothing but her beauty, flowers, 
and the dappled skin of a wild beast, with certain move- 
ments, a certain mode of turning in a circle, which she 
learned of some juggler, with the contours of a fine 
ann ; and that without a word, without a thought, with- 
out her deigning to seem to know it ! What, then, was 
chaos, if that was the work of the seven days ? 

It was not love, however, that I felt, and I cannot 
call it anything else, unless it was thirst. For the first 
time in my life, I felt vibrating in my being a chord 
foreign to my heart. The sight of that beautiful animal 
had made another one bellow in my entrails. I felt 
indeed that I would not have told that woman that I 
loved her, or that she was pleasing to me, or even that 
she was beautiful; there was nothing on my lips but 
the desire to kiss hers, to say to her: “Make me a 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


I3i 

girdle of those indolent arms ; rest that inclining head 
on me; seal that sweet smile to my mouth.” My body 
loved hers; I was taken with beauty as one is taken 
with wine. 

Desgenais passed, and he asked me what I was 
doing there. “Who is that woman?” I said to him. 
He answered: “What woman? of whom do you 
speak ?’ ’ 

I took him by the arm and led him into the hall. 
The Italian woman saw us coming. She smiled ; I took 
a step backwards. “Ah ! ah ! ” said Desgenais, “you 
have waltzed with Marco ? ’ ’ 

“ Who is Marco ? ” I said to him. 

“ Well ! she is that sloth who is laughing down there ; 
does she please you ? ’ ’ 

“No,” I replied, “I have waltzed with her, and I 
want to know her name ; she does not please me other- 
wise.” 

It was shame that made me speak thus ; but, as soon 
as Desgenais had left me, I ran after him. 

“You are very prompt,” he said, laughing. “ Marco 
is not an ordinary girl; she is engaged and almost 

married to Monsieur de , ambassador at Milan. It 

is one of his friends who has brought her to me. Yet,” 
he added, “count on me going to speak to him; we 
will let you die only when there will be no other re- 
source. It may be that we shall succeed in having her 
stay here for supper. ’ ’ 


132 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


Thereupon he moved away. I could not say how 
restless I felt on seeing him approach her ; but I could 
not follow them, they were lost in the crowd. 

“Is it true, then?” I said to myself, “should I come 
to that ? What ! in an instant ! O God ! could it be 
that I am going to love? But, after all,” I thought, 
“it is my senses that are acting; my heart does not 
count for anything in that.” 

I thus sought to calm myself. A few moments 
later, however, Desgenais slapped me on the shoulder. 
“We will have supper in a little while,” he said to 
me; “you will give your arm to Marco; she knows 
that she has been pleasing to you, and that is agreed 
upon.” 

“ Listen,” I said to him ; “ I do not know what I am 
experiencing. It seems to me that I see Vulcan with 
a lame foot covering Venus with his kisses, with his 
besmoked beard, in his forge. He is fixing his wild 
eyes on the thick flesh of his prey. He is concentrating 
himself in the sight of that woman, his only good ; he 
is striving to laugh with joy, he looks as if he was shud- 
dering with happiness ; and, during that time, he remem- 
bers his father Jupiter, who is seated on the summit of 
heaven.” 

Desgenais looked at me without answering ; he took 
hold of my arm and drew me away. “I am tired,” he 
said to me, “lam sad; this noise is killing me. Let 
us go to supper, that will set us up again.” 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


*33 


The supper was splendid ; but I only attended at it. I 
could not touch anything : my lips failed me. “What 
is the matter with you, then?” said Marco to me. But 
I remained like a statue, and I looked at her from head 
to foot in mute astonishment. 

She began to laugh, and Desgenais also, who was 
watching us from a distance. In front of her was a 
large crystal glass cut in the form of a cup, which 
reflected on a thousand sparkling facets the light from 
the lustres and which shone like the prism of the seven 
rainbow colors. She extended her indolent arm, and 
filled the cup to the brim with a golden wave of Cyprus 
wine, of that sugared wine of the East which later on 
I found so bitter on the deserted strand of the Lido. 
“Take it,” she said as she presented it to me, “per 
voi, bambino mio. ,} 

“For you and me, ’ ’ I said to her, presenting the glass to 
her in turn. She moistened her lips with it, and I emp- 
tied it with a sadness that she seemed to read in my eyes. 

“Is it bad?” she said. “No,” I replied. “Or may 
be you have a headache?” “ No.” “Or perhaps you 
are weary?” “No.” “Ah, then! it is a weariness of 
love?” While speaking thus in her jargon, her eyes 
became serious. I knew that she was from Naples, and, 
in spite of herself, while speaking of love, her Italy was 
beating in her heart. 

Another folly followed thereupon. Heads were 
already getting warm, glasses were clinking; already 


134 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


there was mounting to the palest cheeks that slight 
purple with which wine colors the countenance, as if to 
forbid modesty to appear there; a confused murmur, 
like that of the rising tide, rumbled in shocks; looks 
were enkindled here and there, then were suddenly fixed 
and remained vacant; I know not what wind made all 
those uncertain intoxications float toward one another. 
A woman arose as does in a still, tranquil sea the first 
wave that feels the tempest, and which gets ready to 
announce it ; she made a sign with the hand to ask for 
silence, emptied the cup with one gulp, and, with the 
gesture that she made, she pulled off her head-dress ; a 
mass of golden hair rolled down over her shoulders; she 
opened her lips and wanted to intone a convivial song ; 
her eye was half-closed. She breathed with effort ; twice 
did a hoarse sound emerge from her oppressed chest ; a 
mortal paleness suddenly covered her, and she fell back 
on her chair. 

Then began a hubbub which, for more than an hour 
that the supper yet lasted, did not cease until the end. 
It was impossible to distinguish anything there, either 
laughter, or song, or even calling. 

“What do you think of it?” Desgenais said to me. 

“Nothing,” I answered; “I close my ears and look 
on.” 

Amid that bacchanal, the beautiful Marco remained 
mute, drinking nothing, resting quietly on her bare arm 
and letting her slothfulness dream. She seemed neither 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


*35 


astonished nor moved. “ Do you not want to do as they 
are doing?” I asked her; “you who offered me Cyprus 
wine a little while ago, do you not want to taste it 
also?” I poured out for her, while saying that, a large 
glass full to the brim ; she raised it slowly, drank it in 
one draught, then put the glass back on the table, and 
resumed her heedless attitude. 

The more I observed this Marco, the more singular 
she appeared to me ; she took pleasure in nothing, but 
neither did she weary of anything. It seemed as diffi- 
cult to annoy her as to please her ; she made one put 
questions to her, but not of her own motion. I thought 
of the genius of eternal rest, and I said to myself 
that, if that pale statue became a somnambulist, it would 
resemble Marco. 

“ Are you good or wicked?” I said to her, “sad or 
gay? Have you loved? Do you wish any one to love 
you? Do you love money, pleasure, what? horses, the 
country, the ball? what pleases you? of what are you 
dreaming ? ’ ’ And to all these questions the same smile 
on her part, a joyless and painless smile, which meant : 
“What matters it? ” and nothing more. 

I brought my lips close to hers ; she gave me a kiss as 
vacant and indolent as herself, then she raised her hand- 
kerchief to her mouth. “ Marco,” I said to her, “woe 
to him who would love you ! ’ ’ 

She lowered her black eye on me, then raised it 
toward heaven, and, pointing a finger in the air, with 


136 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


that Italian gesture which cannot be imitated, she sweetly 
pronounced the great feminine word of her country : 
Forse ! 

Yet they served dessert; several of the guests had 
arisen ; some were smoking, others had taken to playing, 
a small number remained at table; some women were 
dancing, others were sleeping. The orchestra returned ; 
the candles were growing pale, they put others in their 
place. I recalled Petronius’s supper, where the lamps 
are extinguished around yawning masters, while slaves 
enter on tiptoe and steal the silver. Amid all that, songs 
were ever going on, and three Englishmen, three of 
those sad-looking figures to whom the Continent is a 
hospital, continued, in spite of everything, the most 
ominous ballad that has sprung from their marshes. 

“Come,” I said to Marco, “let us leave!” She 
arose and took my arm. “Until to-morrow!” Des- 
genais called out to me ; we left the room. 

On approaching Marco’s lodging, my heart was beat- 
ing violently ; I could not speak. I had no idea of such 
a woman; she felt neither desire nor disgust, and I knew 
not what to think on seeing my hand tremble beside that 
emotionless being. 

Her room was, like herself, dark and voluptuous ; an 
alabaster lamp half lighted it. The arm-chairs, the sofa, 
were as soft as beds, and I believe that everything there 
was made of down and of silk. On entering I was 
struck with a strong odor of Turkish pastilles, not of 


|Jart gjeconti Chapter IV 


She extended her indolent arm and filled the cup to the 
brim with a golden wave of Cyprus wine. * * * “ Take 
it," she said as she presented it to me, “ per voi, bambino 
mio.” 

"For you and me," I said to her, presenting the glass 
to her in turn. 


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CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


137 


those that are sold here in the streets, but of those of 
Constantinople, which are the most nervous and the 
most dangerous of perfumes. She rang, a chambermaid 
entered. She passed with her into her alcove without 
saying a word to me, and, a few moments later, I saw 
her lying down, resting on her elbow, always in the 
indolent posture that was habitual to her. 

I was standing and I was looking at her. Strange, the 
more I admired her, the more beautiful I found her, the 
more I felt the desires vanish with which she inspired me. 
I know not whether it was a magnetic effect ; her silence 
and her lack of emotion won me. I did as she did, and 
I stretched myself on the sofa in front of the alcove, and 
the coldness of death went down into my soul. 

The beatings of the blood in the arteries are a strange 
clock that one feels vibrate only at night. Man, aban- 
doned then by external objects, falls back on himself; 
he hears himself live. Despite fatigue and sadness, I 
could not close my eyes; Marco’s were fixed on me; 
we looked at each other in silence, and slowly, if one 
may so speak. 

44 What are you doing there?” she said at last; 4 4 are 
you not coming to me?” 

44 Yes, indeed,” I replied ; 44 you are very beautiful ! ” 

A weak sigh was heard, like a plaint: one of the 
chords of Marco’s harp had just snapped. I turned my 
head at this sound, and I saw that the pale tint of the 
first rays of dawn was coloring the windows. 


138 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


I arose and I opened the blinds ; a bright light pene- 
trated into the room. I approached a window and 
stopped for a few moments : the sky was clear, the sun 
cloudless. 

“Will you come, then?” Marco repeated. 

I made her a sign to wait further. Some reasons of 
prudence had made her choose a quarter removed from 
the heart of the city; perhaps she had another lodging 
elsewhere, for she received sometimes. Her lover’s 
friends came to her house, and the room in which we 
were was no doubt only a retreat for lovers ; it looked 
out on the Luxembourg, whose garden stretched afar 
before my eyes. 

Like a cork that, plunged into water, seems restless 
under the hand that holds it, and slips between the fin- 
gers to ascend to the surface, so was agitated in me 
something that I could neither overcome nor remove. 
The sight of the alleys of the Luxembourg made my 
heart bound and every other thought Vanished. How 
often, on those little knolls, playing truant, I had 
stretched myself under the shade, with some good book, 
quite filled with foolish poesy ! for, alas ! those were the 
debauches of my childhood. I found again those far-off 
memories on the stripped trees, on the withered grass of 
the landscapes. There, when I was ten years old, I had 
walked with my brother and my preceptor, throwing 
bread to some poor benumbed birds ; there, seated in a 
corner, I had for hours watched the little girls dancing 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


T 39 


in a ring ; I listened to my artless heart beating to the 
refrains of their childish songs; there, returning from 
college, I had a thousand times traversed the same alley, 
lost in a verse of Virgil, and driving a pebble with my 
foot. “O my childhood ! it is here!” I exclaimed to 
myself ; “ O my God ! Thou art here ! ” 

I turned around. Marco had gone to sleep, the lamp 
had gone out ; the light of day had changed the entire 
appearance of the room : the hangings, which had 
seemed to me of an azure blue, were of a greenish and 
faded tint, and Marco, the beautiful statue, stretched in 
the alcove, was as livid as a corpse. 

I shuddered in spite of myself ; I looked at the alcove, 
then at the garden : my weary head was becoming 
heavy. I took a few steps, and I went and sat down in 
front of an open secretary, near another window. I was 
resting myself on it, and was looking mechanically 
at an unfolded letter that had been left upon it : it con- 
tained only a few words. I read them several times in 
succession without paying any attention to them, until 
their meaning became intelligible to my thought by 
force of recurring to it ; I was suddenly struck by it, 
though it was not possible for me to take in everything. 
I took the paper, and read what follows, written in bad 
orthography : 

“ She died yesterday. At eleven o’clock in the even- 
ing she felt herself failing ; she called me, and said to 
me: ‘Louison, I am going to rejoin my comrade; you 


140 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


are to go to the wardrobe, and you are to take down the 
cloth that is on the nail; it is the fellow of the other.’ 
I threw myself on my knees weeping, but she extended 
her hand, exclaiming : ‘ Do not weep ! do not weep ! ’ 
And she heaved such a sigh ’ ’ 

The rest was torn. I cannot picture the effect that 
this sinister reading produced on me; I turned the 
paper over and saw Marco’s address, the date, the day 
before. “She is dead? and who, then, is dead?” I 
exclaimed to myself involuntarily as I went to the 
alcove. “Dead! who, then? who, then?” 

Marco opened her eyes; she saw me seated on her 
bed, the letter in my hand. “It is my mother,” said she, 
“who is dead. You are not coming near me, then?” 

And, saying that, she stretched out her hand. “Si- 
lence ! ” I said to her; “sleep, and leave me here.” 
She turned over and went to sleep again. I looked at 
her for some time, until, having assured myself that she 
could no longer hear me, I moved away and left quietly. 


v 


I was seated one evening by the fireside with Des- 
genais. The window was open; it was one of those 
first days of March, that are the harbingers of spring; 
it had rained, a sweet odor came from the garden. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


141 

“What shall we do, my friend,” I said to him, “when 
spring is come ? I feel a desire to travel. * ’ 

“ I shall do,” said Desgenais to me, “what I did last 
year ; I shall go to the country when it will be time to 
go there. ’ ’ 

“ What ! ” I replied, “ do you do the same thing every 
year? You are going, then, to begin your life again 
this year ? ’ ’ 

“What do you want me to do?” he answered. 

“Right ! ” I exclaimed as I jumped up; “yes, what 
will you have me do ? you have well said. Ah ! Des- 
genais, how all that tires me ! Are you never weary of 
this life that you are leading? ” 

“ No,” he said to me. 

I was standing in front of an engraving that repre- 
sented the Magdalen in the desert ; I joined my hands 
involuntarily. “ What are you doing, then ? ” Desgenais 
asked me. 

“ If I were a painter,” I said to him, “ and if I wanted 
to paint melancholy, I would not paint a dreamy young 
girl, with a book in her hands.” 

“Of whom are you thinking this evening?” he said, 
laughing. 

“No, indeed,” I continued; “this Magdalen in 
tears has her bosom swollen with hope ; this pale and 
sickly hand, on which she rests her head, is still em- 
balmed with the perfumes which she poured on Christ’s 
feet. Do you not see that in this desert there is a people 


142 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


who meditate, who pray ? There is no melancholy in 
that.” 

“ It is a woman reading,” he replied in a dry voice. 

“And a happy woman,” I said to him, “and a 
happy book. ’ ’ 

Desgenais understood what I wanted to say ; he saw 
that a deep sorrow was taking possession of me. He 
asked me if I had any cause for grief. I hesitated to 
answer him, and I felt my heart break. 

“At last, my dear Octave,” he said to me, “if you 
have a subject that gives you pain, do not hesitate to 
confide it to me; speak openly, and you will find a 
friend in me.” 

“I know it,” I replied, “I have a friend; but my 
pain has no friend. ’ ’ 

He pressed me to explain myself. “Well,” I said 
to him, “if I explain myself, of what service will that 
be to you, since you can do nothing for it, any more 
than I can ? Is it the bottom of my heart that you ask 
of me, or is it only the first word that comes, and an 
excuse?” 

“ Be frank,” he said to me. 

“Well,” I replied, “well, Desgenais, you have given 
me advice in proper season, and I entreat you to listen 
to me, as I listened to you then. You ask me what I 
have in my heart, I am going to tell you. 

“ Take the first man who comes along, and say to 
him : ‘ There are folks who spend their life in drinking, 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


143 


in horseback riding, in laughing, in playing, in making 
use of all sorts of pleasure ; no shackle restrains them ; 
they have as their law whatever pleases them, women 
as many as they want ; they are rich. Of other cares, 
not one; all days are feast-days to them.’ What do you 
think of it ? Unless that man be a strict devotee, he 
will answer you that it is human weakness, if he does 
not answer you simply that it is the greatest happiness 
that can be imagined. 

“Then lead that man to action; set him at table, a 
woman by his side, a glass in his hand, a handful of gold 
every morning, and then say to him : ‘ There is your 
life. Whilst you will be asleep beside your mistress, 
your horses will prance in the stable ; whilst you will be 
making your horse wheel on the promenade strand, the 
wine will be ripening in your cellars; whilst you will 
be spending the night in drinking, the bankers will be 
increasing your wealth. You have only to wish, and 
your desires become realities. You are the happiest of 
men ; but take care lest you drink one evening beyond 
measure and lest you will no longer find your body 
ready for joys. That will be a great misfortune, for 
all sorrows are consoled, except those. You will gallop 
some fine night in the forest with joyous companions ; 
your horse will make a false step, you will fall into a 
trench full of mire, and you will run the risk of your 
companions, filled with wine, in the midst of their 
glorious hilarity, not hearing your cries of anguish; 


144 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


take care lest they pass without perceiving you, and lest 
the sound of their joy do not penetrate into the forest, 
whilst you are dragging yourself along in the darkness 
on your broken limbs. You will lose at gambling some 
evening; fortune has its bad days. When you shall 
have returned home and sat at your fireside, beware of 
striking your brow, of letting grief moisten your eyelids, 
and of casting your eyes here and there with bitterness, 
as when one is looking for a friend ; be careful, espe- 
cially about thinking all of a sudden, in your solitude, 
of those who have over there, under some thatched roof, 
a peaceful household and who sleep holding each other’s 
hand ; for, in front of you, on your splendid bed, will 
be seated, as your sole confidant, the pale creature who 
is the lover of your crowns. You will recline upon her 
to comfort your oppressed bosom, and she will make the 
reflection that you are very sad, and that the loss must 
be considerable ; the tears in your eyes will cause her 
great care, for they are capable of letting the dress grow 
old that she is wearing, and of making the rings fall 
from her fingers. Do not mention the name of him who 
has won from you that evening ; it might be that she 
would meet him to-morrow, and that she would make 
soft eyes to your ruin. That is what human weakness 
is : are you compelled to have it ? Are you a man ? 
be on your guard against disgust ; it is, moreover, an 
incurable evil : a corpse is worth more than a living 
person disgusted with living. Have you a heart ? be on 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


145 

your guard against love ; it is worse than an evil for a 
debauchee, it is a ridiculous thing ; debauchees pay their 
mistresses, and the woman who sells herself has the 
right of contempt only over a single man in the world — 
him who loves her. Have you passions? be on your 
guard against your countenance ; it is a shame for a 
soldier to cast off his armor, and for a debauchee to 
appear to hold to anything whatever; his glory con- 
sists in touching nothing but with marble hands rubbed 
with oil, on which everything ought to slip. Are you 
hot-headed ? If you want to live, learn to kill : wine 
is sometimes quarrelsome. Have you a conscience? 
be careful about your sleep ; a debauchee who repents 
too late is like a vessel that takes water ; it can neither 
return to land nor continue its voyage; it is all very 
well for the winds to drive it, the ocean attracts it, it 
turns on itself and disappears. If you have a body, be 
on your guard against suffering; if you have a soul, 
be on your guard against despair. O unhappy man! 
beware of men ; as long as you walk in the way you 
are in now, you will seem to see an immense plain on 
which is displayed in flowery garlands a farandole of 
dancers who hold one another like the rings of a chain ; 
but that is only a slight mirage ; those who look at 
their feet know that they are dancing on a silk thread 
stretched over an abyss, and that the abyss swallows up 
many silent falls without a ripple on its surface. May 
your foot not fail you ! Nature herself feels her divine 


146 THE CONFESSION OF A 

sympathy withdraw from you ; the trees and the reeds no 
longer recognize you; you have falsified your mother’s 
laws, you are no longer the foster-children’s brother, 
and the birds of the fields are silent on seeing you. 
You are alone. Be on your guard against God ! you 
are alone before Him, standing up, like a cold statue, 
on the pedestal of your will. The rain of heaven no 
longer refreshes you, it undermines you, it torments you. 
The passing wind no longer gives you the kiss of life, 
the sacred communion of all that breathes ; it shakes 
you, it makes you stagger. Each woman whom you 
embrace takes a spark of your strength without giving 
you back one of her own ; you are exhausting yourself 
on phantoms ; where a drop of your perspiration falls, 
there springs up one of the inauspicious plants that grow 
in the cemeteries. Die ! you are the enemy of all that 
loves ; sink into your solitude, do not wait for old age ; 
leave no child on earth, do not fecundate a corrupted 
blood; efface yourself like smoke, do not deprive the 
growing grain of wheat of a ray of sunshine ! ’ ’ 

As I finished these words I fell into an arm-chair, and 
a stream of tears flowed from my eyes. “Ah! Desge- 
nais,” I exclaimed to myself sobbing, “ is not that what 
you have said to me? Did you not know it, then? 
And, if you did know it, why did you not say so ? ” 

But Desgenais himself had his hands clasped ; he was 
as pale as a shroud, and a slow tear trickled down his 
cheek. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


147 


There was a moment’s silence between us. The clock 
struck ; I suddenly thought that it was just a year ago 
on such a day, at such an hour, that I had discovered 
that my mistress was deceiving me. 

“Do you hear that clock?” I exclaimed to myself, 
“do you hear it? I do not know what it is striking 
at present ; but it is a terrible hour, and one that will 
count in my life.” 

I spoke thus in a transport and without being able 
to unravel what was passing within me. But almost 
at the same instant a domestic entered the room hur- 
riedly ; he took hold of my hand, led me aside, and said 
to me in quite a low tone : “Monsieur, I come to notify 
you that your father is dying ; he has just been seized 
with an attack of apoplexy, and the doctors despair of 
him.” 




PART THIRD 











PART THIRD 


I 


My father lived in the country, some distance from 
Paris. When I arrived, I found the doctor at the door, 
and he said to me: “You have come too late; your 
father would have liked to see you for the last time. ’ ’ 

I entered and saw my father dead. “Monsieur,’’ I 
said to the doctor, “ I beg you to get everybody to 
withdraw and to leave me alone here ; my father had 
something to say to me, and he will say it to me.” 
At my orders, the domestics went away; I then ap- 
proached the bed, and gently raised the shroud that 
already covered the countenance. But, as soon as I 
had cast my eyes on him, I hurried to embrace him, 
and lost consciousness. 

I 5 l 


! 5 2 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


When I recovered, I heard some one saying : “If 
he asks, refuse him, no matter on what pretext.’' I 
understood that they wanted to remove me from the 
death-bed, and I feigned to have heard nothing. As 
they saw that I was tranquil, they left me. I waited 
until everybody in the house had gone to bed, and 
taking a light, I betook myself to my father’s room. 
There I found a young ecclesiastic alone, seated near 
the bed. “Monsieur,” I said to him, “ to dispute with 
an orphan the last vigil by his father’s side is a bold 
undertaking ; I know not what they may have said to 
you. Remain in the next room; if there is anything 
wrong, I will take it on myself.” 

He withdrew. A single candle placed on a table 
lighted the bed; I sat on the ecclesiastic’s seat and 
discovered once more those traits that I was never to 
see again. “What did you want to say to me, father?” 
I asked him: “what was your last thought when seeking 
your child with your eyes ? ’ ’ 

My father kept a diary in which he was accustomed 
to record everything that he did day by day. That 
diary was on the table, and I saw that it was open ; 
I approached it and knelt down ; on the open page 
were these few words only: “Adieu, my son, I love 
you, and I am dying.” 

I did not shed a tear, not a sob escaped from my 
lips ; my throat became contracted, and my mouth was 
as if sealed ; I looked at my father without budging. 


$art ©jtrto Chapter 5 


/ betook myself to my father' s room. There / found a 
young ecclesiastic alone , seated near the bed. * * * 

He withdrew. A single candle placed on a table lighted 
the bed ; I sat on the ecclesiastic' s seat and discovered once 
more those traits that I was never to see again. “ What 
did you want to say to me , father?" I asked him: 
“ what was your last thought when seekmg your child 
with your eyes ? " 




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CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


153 


He knew of my life, and my disorders had more 
than once given him reason for complaint or repri- 
mand. I scarcely ever saw him that he did not speak 
to me of my future, of my youth and of my follies. 
His advice had often snatched me from my evil destiny, 
and was of great weight, for his life had been, from 
beginning to end, a model of virtue, peace, and good- 
ness. I expected that before dying he had wished to 
see me, so -as to try once more to turn me from the 
way on which I had entered ; but death had come 
too quickly; he had suddenly felt that he no longer 
had but a word to say, and he had said that he 
loved me. 


11 


A little wooden railing surrounded my father’s tomb. 
In accordance with his express will, manifested a long 
time back, he had been interred in the village ceme- 
tery. Every day I went there, and I spent a part of 
the day on a little bench placed inside the tomb. 
The rest of the time I lived alone, in the very house 
in which he had died, and I had with me only a 
single male servant. 

Whatever pain the passions may cause, the sorrows 
of life must not be compared with those of death. The 


J 54 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


first thing that I had felt on sitting beside my father’s 
bed, is that I was an unreasonable child, who knew 
nothing and was acquainted with nothing ; I may even 
go as far as to say that my heart felt a physical pain 
on account of his death, and I sometimes twisted my- 
self while wringing my hands, like an apprentice on 
awaking. 

During the first months that I remained in that 
country, it did not occur to my mind to think either 
of the past or of the future. It did not seem to me 
that it was I who had lived until then ; what I expe- 
rienced was not despair and in no respect resembled 
those fierce sufferings that I had felt; it was only 
languor in all my actions, like weariness of and indif- 
ference to everything, but with a poignant bitterness 
that was gnawing me internally. All day I held a 
book in my hand, but I scarcely read, or, to express 
it better, not at all, and I know not of what I was 
dreaming. I had no thoughts; everything in me was 
silence; I had received a blow so violent and at the 
same time so prolonged, that I had come out of it, 
as it were, a purely passive being, and nothing in me 
reacted. 

My servant, whose name was Larive, had been very 
much attached to my father ; he was, perhaps, after 
my father himself, the best man whom I had ever 
known. He was of the same build as my father and 
wore his clothes, for, having no livery, my father gave 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


*55 


them to him. He was of almost the same age, that is, 
his hair was turning gray, and, for the twenty years 
that he had not left my father, he had adopted some- 
thing of his ways. While I was walking in the room 
after dinner, going and coming lengthwise and cross- 
wise, I heard him doing in the antechamber just as I 
was doing ; though the door was open, he never entered, 
and we said not a word to each other ; but from time to 
time we saw each other weep. The evenings passed 
thus, and the sun was long set when I thought of asking 
for a light, or he of bringing me one. 

Everything had remained in the house in the same 
order as before, and we had not disarranged even a 
piece of paper there. The large leather arm-chair in 
which my father sat was near the fire-place ; his table, 
his books, placed in like manner ; I respected even the 
dust on his furniture, which he did not like any one to 
disarrange in order to dust it. That lonely house, 
accustomed to silence and the most tranquil life, had 
taken notice of nothing ; it seemed to me only that the 
walls sometimes regarded me with pity, when I envel- 
oped myself in my father’s dressing-gown and sat down 
in his arm-chair. A weak voice seemed to be raised and 
to say: “Where has the father gone? we see indeed 
that this is the orphan. ’ ’ 

I received several letters from Paris, and to all I 
answered that I wished to spend the summer alone in 
the country, as my father had been accustomed to do. 


156 THE CONFESSION OF A 

I began to feel this truth, that in all evils there is ever 
something good, and that a great sorrow, whatever one 
may say of it, is a great rest. Whatever be the news 
they bring, when God’s envoys slap us on the shoulder, 
they always do that good work of reawakening life in us, 
and where they speak, all is silence. Passing sorrows 
blaspheme and accuse Heaven ; great sorrows neither 
accuse nor blaspheme, they listen. 

In the morning, I spent whole hours in contemplation 
of nature. My windows looked out on a deep valley, 
and in the middle arose the village bell-tower; all was 
poor and peaceful. The sight of spring, of the opening 
flowers and leaves, did not produce on me that gloomy 
effect of which the poets speak, who in the contrasts 
of life find a mockery of death. I believe that this 
frivolous idea, if it be not a mere antithesis made to 
pleasure, belongs as yet in reality only to hearts that 
but half feel. The gambler who leaves at daybreak, his 
eyes inflamed and his hands empty, may feel himself 
at war with nature, as the torch of a hideous vigil ; but 
what can the growing leaves say to a child who mourns 
his father? The tears in his eyes are sisters of the 
dew ; the willow leaves are tears themselves. It is while 
looking at the heavens, the woods, and the meadows 
that I understand what men are who imagine they are 
consoling themselves. 

Larive was no more desirous of consoling me than of 
consoling himself. At the time of my father’s death, he 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 157 

had been afraid lest I should sell the house and take 
him to Paris. I do not know whether he was informed 
of my past life, but he had shown me uneasiness at first, 
and, when he saw me installed, his first look went to my 
heart. It was on a day on which I had a large portrait 
of my father brought from Paris; I had it put in the 
dining-room. When Larive entered to serve, he saw it ; 
he stood as if uncertain, looking sometimes at the por- 
trait, sometimes at me; there was a joy so sad in his 
eyes that I could not resist it. He seemed to say to me: 
“What happiness! we are going, then, to suffer in 
peace ! ” I extended my hand to him, and he covered 
it with kisses, sobbing. 

He, so to say, took care of my grief, as being the 
mistress of his. When I went in the morning to my 
father’s tomb, I found him there watering the flowers; 
as soon as he saw me, he left and returned to the house. 
He followed me on my walks; as I was on horseback 
and he on foot, I never wanted him ; but, as soon as I 
had gone a hundred paces in the valley, I perceived him 
behind me, his stick in his hand and wiping his brow. I 
bought a small horse for him that belonged to a peasant 
of the neighborhood, and we thus betook ourselves to 
traversing the woods. 

There were in the village some acquaintances who 
often came to the house. My door was closed against 
them, though I regretted that ; but I could not see 
any one without impatience. Shut up in my solitude, I 


158 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


thought, after some time, of looking up my father’s 
papers. Larive brought them to me with pious respect ; 
and, detaching the tape with a trembling hand, he spread 
them out before me. 

On reading the first few pages I felt in my heart that 
freshness which vivifies the air around a tranquil lake ; 
the sweet serenity of my father’s soul was exhaled like 
a perfume of dried leaves in proportion as I unfolded 
them. The diary of his life reappeared before me ; I 
could count, day by day, the beatings of that noble 
heart. I began to bury myself in a sweet and profound 
dream, and, despite the serious and firm character that 
dominated everywhere, I discovered an ineffable grace, 
the peaceful flower of his goodness. Whilst I was read- 
ing, the memory of his death was incessantly mingled 
with the story of his life ; I cannot tell with what sad- 
ness I followed that limpid brook that I had seen fall 
into the ocean. 

“Oh, just man!’’ I exclaimed, “man without fear 
and without reproach ! what candor in thy experience ! 
Thy devotedness to thy friends, thy divine tenderness 
for my mother, thy admiration for nature, thy sublime 
love of God, that was thy life; there was no place in 
thy heart for anything else. The virgin snow on the 
mountain peaks is not more pure than thy holy old age ; 
thy white hair resembled it. O father ! O father ! give 
it to me ; it is younger than my blond head. Let me 
live and die like thee; I want to plant on the earth 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


159 


where you sleep, the green branch of my new life ; I will 
water it with my tears, and the God of orphans will let 
that pious grass grow on the grief of a child and the 
memory of an old man.” 

After having read those cherished papers, I classified 
them in order. I also then made the resolution to write 
my diary; I had one bound similar to my father’s, and, 
carefully looking through his for the least occupations of 
his life, I took it on me as a task to make mine conform 
to it. Thus, at each moment of the day, the clock as 
it ticked made the tears come to my eyes: “That,” I 
said to myself, “is what my father did at this hour;” 
and whether it was a reading, a walk, or a meal, I never 
missed it. I accustomed myself in this way to a calm 
and regular life; there was in that punctual exactness 
an infinite charm to my heart. I went to sleep with a 
happiness that my sadness made more agreeable to me. 
My father concerned himself a great deal with gardening ; 
the rest of the day, study, walking, a fair division between 
the exercises of the body and those of the mind. At the 
same time I inherited his habits of beneficence, and con- 
tinued to do for the unfortunate what he himself had 
done. I began to look in my rounds for the people who 
had need of me ; there was no scarcity of them in the 
valley. Ere long I was known to the poor ; shall I say it? 
yes, I will say it boldly : where the heart is good, sorrow 
is healthy. For the first time in my life I was happy. 
God blessed my tears, and sorrow taught me virtue. 


i6o 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


m 

As I was walking one evening in a linden alley, at the 
entrance to the village, I saw a young woman leaving a 
detached house. She was dressed very simply and 
veiled, so that I could not see her countenance ; yet her 
figure and walk seemed to me so charming that I fol- 
lowed her with my eyes for some time. As she was 
crossing a neighboring meadow, a white goat that was 
grazing at liberty in a field ran to her ; she gave it some 
caresses and looked on one side and then on the other, 
as if in search of a favorite grass to give to it. I saw a 
wild mulberry-tree near me ; I plucked a branch from it 
and advanced holding it in my hand. The goat came 
towards me with measured steps, with a timid air ; then 
it stopped, not daring to take the branch from my hand. 
Its mistress made a sign to it as if to embolden it, but 
it looked at her in a restless way ; she took a few steps 
towards me, laid her hand on the branch, which the 
goat at once seized. I saluted her, and she continued 
her journey. 

On my return home, I asked Larive if he did not 
know who lived in the village at the place that I de- 
scribed to him ; it was a small house of modest appear- 
ance, with a garden. He knew it; the only two 
occupants were an aged woman passing for being very 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


161 


devout, and a young woman whose name was Madame 
Pierson. It was she whom I had seen. I asked him who 
she was, and if she came to my father’s house. He 
replied that she was a widow, led a retired life, and that 
he had seen her sometimes, but rarely, at my father’s. 
Nothing further was said of her, and, going out again 
thereupon, I returned to my lindens, where I sat on a 
bench. 

I know not what sadness took possession of me all of 
a sudden on seeing the goat return to me. I arose, and, 
as if by distraction, looking along the path that Madame 
Pierson had taken on her departure, I followed it in quite 
a dreamy way, so much so that I wandered far up the 
mountain. 

It was nearly eleven o’clock in the evening when I 
thought of returning; as I had walked a great deal, I 
directed my steps towards a farm-house that I noticed, 
to ask for a cup of milk and a slice of bread. At the 
same time, large drops of rain that were beginning to 
fall betold a storm that I wanted to let pass over. 
Though there was light and I heard comings and 
goings, no one answered me when I knocked, so that I 
approached a window to look whether there was any 
one there. 

I saw a large fire lighted in the lower hall ; the farmer, 
whom I knew, was seated near his bed ; I knocked on 
the panes while calling him. At the same moment 
the door opened, and I was surprised to see Madame 


162 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


Pierson, whom I recognized at once, and who asked me 
who was outside. 

I so little expected to find her there that she noticed 
my astonishment. I entered the room, asking her per- 
mission to shelter myself. I did not imagine what she 
could be doing at such an hour at a farm-house almost 
lost far in the country, when a plaintive voice that came 
from the bed made me turn my head around, and I 
saw that the farmer’s wife was lying with death on her 
countenance. 

Madame Pierson, who had followed me, had sat down 
in front of the poor man, who seemed overwhelmed 
with grief ; she gave me a sign not to make any noise : 
the patient was asleep. I took a chair and sat in a 
corner until the storm should pass over. 

While I remained there, I saw her arise from time to 
time, go to the bed, and speak low to the farmer. One 
of the children, whom I drew upon my knees, told me 
that she came every evening since his mother was sick, 
and that she sometimes spent the night there. She 
filled the office of a Sister of Charity; there was no one 
but her in the country, and a single physician who was 
very ignorant. “She is Brigitte la Rose,” he said to 
me in a low voice ; “do you not know her ? ’ ’ 

“ No,” I said to him in the same way ; “ why do they 
call her so ? ” He answered that he knew nothing of 
it, unless it was, perhaps, that she had been a rose 
winner, and that the name had stuck to her. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


163 


Madame Pierson, however, no longer had on her veil ; 
I could see her features uncovered ; just as the child left 
me, I raised my head. She was near the bed, holding a 
cup in her hand and offering it to the farmer’s wife, who 
had awakened. She seemed to me pale and somewhat 
thin ; her hair was of an ashy blond. She was not regu- 
larly beautiful; what shall I say of her? Her large black 
eyes were fixed on those of the patient, and that poor 
being at death’s door was looking at her also. There 
was, in that simple exchange of charity and gratitude, 
a beauty that is not spoken. 

The rain redoubled ; a deep darkness hung over the 
deserted fields, which violent claps of thunder lit up at 
moments. The roar of the storm, the moaning wind, 
the wrath of the elements let loose on the thatch roof, 
by their contrast with the religious silence of the cabin, 
gave still more sanctity and, as it were, a strange 
grandeur to the scene to which I was a witness. I 
looked at the pallet, those drenched window-panes, the 
puffs of thick smoke driven back by the storm, the stolid 
dejection of the farmer, the superstitious terror of the 
children, all that outside fury laying siege to a dying 
woman ; and when in the midst of all that, I saw this 
woman sweet and pale and coming on tiptoe, not leaving 
off her patient well-doing for a minute, not seeming to 
notice anything, either the storm, or our presence, or 
her own courage, unless one had need of her, it seemed 
to me that there was in that tranquil work something 


164 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


indescribably more serene than the most beautiful cloud- 
less sky, and that a superhuman creature, indeed, was she 
who, surrounded by so much horror, did not for a single 
instant doubt her God. 

“What, then, is that woman?” I questioned myself. 
“Whence comes she? How long has she been here? 
For a long time, since they remember having seen her 
a rose winner. How is it I have not heard her spoken 
of? She comes alone to this hut, at this hour? When 
one danger will no longer call her, she will go in search 
of another? Yes, through all these storms, all these 
forests, all these mountains, she goes and comes, simple 
and veiled, bearing life where it is failing, holding this 
fragile little cup, caressing her goat as she passes. It is 
with that silent and calm step that she herself walks to 
death. That is what she has been doing in this valley 
while I have been making the rounds of the gambling 
houses; she was born there, no doubt, and they will 
bury her there in a corner of the cemetery, beside 
my dearly beloved father. Thus will die this obscure 
woman, of whom no one speaks and about whom the 
children ask : ‘ Is it possible that you do not know 
her?’” 

I cannot tell what I felt ; I was motionless in a corner, 
I breathed only in trembling, and it seemed to me that 
if I had tried to aid her, if I had extended a hand to 
spare her a step, I should have committed a sacrilege 
and touched sacred vessels. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


i6 5 

The storm lasted nearly two hours. When it had 
subsided, the patient, having sat up, began to say that 
she felt better and that what she had taken did her good. 
The children ran at once to her bed, looking at their 
mother with half-doubting, half-gladdened, staring eyes, 
and hanging on to Madame Pierson’s dress. 

“I really think so,” said the husband, who did not 
budge from his place; “we have had a Mass said, and 
it has cost us a great deal ! ’ ’ 

At this gross and stupid expression, I looked at 
Madame Pierson ; her sunken eyes, her paleness, the 
attitude of her body, clearly showed her fatigue, and 
that the vigils were exhausting her. “ Ah ! my poor 
man,” said the patient, “may God give it back to 
you!” 

I could not hold out any longer ; I arose as if carried 
away by the stupidity of those brutes, who for the 
charity of an angel gave thanks to the avarice of their 
pastor ; I was ready to reproach them for their base in- 
gratitude and to treat them as they deserved. Madame 
Pierson raised up one of the farmer’s children in her 
arms, and said to it with a smile: “Embrace your 
mother, she is saved.” I stopped on hearing these 
words ; never has the unaffected satisfaction of a happy 
and benevolent soul been pictured with such frankness 
on so sweet a countenance. All of a sudden, I no longer 
found on it either her fatigue or her paleness ; she was 
radiant with all the purity of her joy ; and she also gave 


1 66 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


thanks to God. The patient had just spoken, and what 
mattered it what she had said ? 

A few moments later, however, Madame Pierson told 
the children to wake up the farm-boy, in order that he 
might take her back. I advanced to offer myself as her 
escort ; I told her it was useless to wake up the boy, as 
I was returning by the same road, that she would do me 
an honor by accepting. She asked me if I was not 

Octave de T . I answered that I was, and that she 

perhaps remembered my father. It seemed to me singu- 
lar that this request made her smile ; she cheerfully took 
my arm, and we departed. 


IV 

We walked in silence ; the wind had lulled ; the 
trees trembled gently as they threw the rain from their 
branches. Some distant lightning flashes still shone. 
A perfume of humid verdure arose in the cooled air. 
The sky soon became clear again, and the moon clothed 
the mountain in light. 

I could not help thinking of the oddity of chance, 
which, in so short a time, thus made me find myself 
alone, at night, in a lonely country, the traveling com- 
panion of a woman of whose existence I had no knowl- 
edge at sunrise. She had accepted my escort for the 
name that I bore, and walked with assurance, leaning 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


167 


on my arm in a careless way. It seemed to me that this 
confidence was quite bold or quite simple ; and it must 
indeed have been both, for at each step that we took I 
felt my heart become proud and innocent. 

We began to converse about the patient whom she was 
leaving, of what we saw on the way ; it did not occur to 
us to put questions to each other as new acquaintances. 
She spoke to me of my father, and always in the same 
tone as she had assumed when I had first recalled his 
memory to her, that is, almost cheerfully. In propor- 
tion as I listened to her, I thought I understood why, 
and why she spoke thus not only of death, but of life, 
of suffering, and of everything in the world. It was 
that human sufferings taught her nothing that could 
accuse God, and I felt the piety of her smile. 

I told her of the solitary life that I was leading. Her 
aunt, she said to me, saw my father more frequently than 
she herself did ; they played cards together after dinner. 
She made me promise to go to her house, where I should 
be welcome. 

About the middle of the journey she felt fatigued, 
and sat down for some moments on a bench that the 
thick trees had protected from the rain. I remained 
standing in front of her, and I was looking at the pale 
rays of the moon falling on her forehead. After a 
moment’s silence, she arose, and seeing me absent- 
minded, “What are you thinking of?” she said to me; 
“it is time to resume our walk.” 


i68 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


“ I was thinking,” I replied, “why God created you, 
and I was saying to myself that indeed it was to heal 
those who are suffering.” 

“That is an expression,” she said, “which in your 
mouth can hardly be anything else than a compliment.” 

“Why?” 

“ Because to me you seem quite young.” 

“ It sometimes happens,” I said to her, “ that one is 
older than he looks. ’ * 

“Yes,” she replied laughingly, “and it also happens 
that one is younger than he talks. ’ * 

“ Do you not believe in experience?” 

“ I know that it is the name most men give to their 
follies and to their sorrows ; what can one know at your 
age?” 

“ Madame, a man of twenty may have lived more 
than a woman of thirty. The liberty that men enjoy 
leads them much more speedily to the bottom of all 
things; they run unshackled towards all that attracts 
them ; they try everything. As soon as they hope, they 
set out on the march, they go, they hurry. Having at- 
tained their end, they turn back ; hope has remained on 
the way, and happiness has failed to keep its promise.” 

As I spoke thus, we were at the top of a little hill 
that sloped down into the valley ; Madame Pierson, as 
if invited by the rapid descent, took to jumping lightly. 
Without knowing why, I did as she was doing ; we both 
began running without letting go of each other’s arms; 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


169 


the slippery grass drew us on. At last, like two stunned 
birds, while jumping and laughing, we found ourselves 
at the foot of the mountain. 

“See,” said Madame Pierson, “I was fatigued a 
moment ago ; now I am no longer so. And would you 
believe me?” she added, in a charming tone, “treat 
your experience somewhat as I treat my fatigue. We 
have run a good race, and we will sup with the better 
appetite on that account.” 


v 


I went to see her next day. I found her at her piano, 
the old aunt embroidering at the window, her little room 
filled with flowers, the finest sunshine in the world 
coming through her Venetian blinds, and a large bird- 
cage alongside of her. 

I expected to see in her almost a nun, at least one 
of those provincial women who know nothing of what 
is going on two leagues away, and who live in a cer- 
tain circle outside of which they never go. I acknowl- 
edge that these secluded existences, that are, as it were, 
buried here and there in cities, under thousands of un- 
known roofs, have always had a terror for me like stag- 
nant cisterns ; the air there seems to me not fit to live in ; 
in all that is forgotten on earth, there is a little of death. 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


170 

Madame Pierson had the newspapers and new books 
on her table ; it is quite true that she scarcely touched 
them. Despite the simplicity of her surroundings, of 
her furniture, of her apparel, fashion, that is, novelty, 
life, was evident there; she neither put it on nor con- 
cerned herself with it, but all that was manifest. What 
struck me in her tastes was that nothing was odd 
there, but only youthful and pleasant. Her conversa- 
tion showed a finished education ; there was nothing of 
which she did not speak well and easily. Though one saw 
that she was artless, at the same time one felt that she was 
profound, richly gifted ; a vast and free understanding 
there hovered sweetly over a simple heart and over the 
habits of a retired life. The sea-swallow, which zigzags in 
the azure of the heavens, hovers thus from a cloudy height 
over the tuft of grass in which she has built her nest. 

We talked literature, music, and touched on politics. 
She had gone in winter to Paris; from time to time she 
glanced at the world ; what she saw of it served as a 
theme, and the rest was guessed at. 

But what distinguished her above all was a pleasant- 
ness which, without amounting to delight, was unaltera- 
ble ; one would have said that she was born a flower, 
and that its perfume was gayety. 

With her paleness and her large black eyes, I cannot 
say how striking that was, without taking into account 
that, from time to time, at certain words, at certain 
looks, it was clear to be seen that she had suffered and 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 171 

that life had not spared her. I do not know what it 
was in her that told you that the sweet serenity of her 
brow had not come from this world, but that she had 
received it from God and that she would give it back to 
Him faithfully, in spite of men, without losing anything 
of it ; and there were moments when one recalled the 
housekeeper who, when the air is stirring, puts her hand 
in front of her candle. 

As soon as I had spent a half-hour in her room, I 
could not help telling her all that I had in my heart. 
I thought of my past life, of my sorrows, of my weari- 
ness ; I moved about, leaning over the flowers, breathing 
the air, looking at the sun. I begged her to sing, she 
did so with good grace. During that time I was resting 
against the window and I was looking at her birds hop- 
ping about. An expression of Montaigne’s came into 
my head : “ I neither love nor esteem sadness, though the 
world has undertaken, as if at a fixed price, to honor it 
with special favor. They clothe with it wisdom, virtue, 
conscience. Stupid and mean adornment.” 

“ What happiness ! ” I exclaimed in spite of myself, 
“ what rest ! what joy ! what forgetfulness ! ” 

The good aunt raised her head and looked at me with 
an air of astonishment; Madame Pierson stopped short. 
I became as red as fire, feeling my folly, and I went and 
sat down without saying a word. 

We went down to the garden. The white goat that 
I had seen the evening before was lying there on the 


172 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


grass ; it came to her as soon as it saw her,- and followed 
us familiarly. 

At the first turn of the alley, a large young man, of 
pale countenance, enveloped in a sort of black cassock, 
suddenly appeared at the gate. He entered without 
knocking, and came to greet Madame Pierson ; it seemed 
to me that his countenance, which I already found of 
bad omen, became a little darkened on seeing me. He 
was a priest whom I had seen in the village, and whose 
name was Mercanson ; he came from Saint-Sulpice, and 
the pastor of the place was his relative. 

He was, at the same time, stout and pallid, a fact 
that has always struck me unfavorably, and which, in- 
deed, makes a bad impression : it is a counter-meaning, 
is that sickly health. Besides, he had a slow and jerky 
way of talking that betokened a pedant. His very walk, 
which was neither young nor easy, shocked me ; as for 
his look, one might say that he had none. I do not 
know what to think of a man whose eyes tell me nothing. 
Those are the signs by which I had judged Mercanson, 
and which, unfortunately, did not deceive me. 

He sat down on a bench and began to speak of Paris, 
which he called the modern Babylon. He came from 
there, he knew everybody; he went to Madame de 

B ’s, who was an angel; he delivered sermons in 

her parlor, people listened to them on their knees. — The 
worst of the matter is that it was true. — One of his 
friends, whom he had brought there, had just been 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


*73 


expelled from college for having seduced a girl, which 
was terrible indeed, very sad. He paid a thousand 
compliments to Madame Pierson on the charitable 
habits that she had contracted in the country ; he had 
learned of her benefactions, the attentions that she 
bestowed on the sick, even to watching over them in 
person. It was very noble, very real; he would not 
fail to speak of it at Saint-Sulpice. Did he not seem 
to say that he would not fail to speak of it to God ? 

Wearied by this harangue, so as not to shrug my 
shoulders at it, I had lain down on the grass, and I was 
playing with the goat. Mercanson lowered on me his 
dull and lifeless eye: “The famous Vergniaud,” he 
said, “had that mania for sitting on the ground and 
playing with animals. ’ ’ 

“It is a mania,” I replied, “quite innocent, Mon- 
sieur l’Abbe. If people had only such, folks might get 
along all alone, without so many people wishing to 
meddle.” 

My reply did not please him ; he knit his brow and 
spoke of something else. He was entrusted with a com- 
mission : his relative, the village pastor, had spoken 
to him of a poor devil who had not the wherewith to 
buy his bread. He lived at such a place ; he had been 
there himself, he had interested himself in the case ; he 
hoped that Madame Pierson 

I looked at her during that time, and I waited for her 
to answer, as if the sound of her voice would have 


174 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


cured me of that of this priest. She only made a 
profound bow, and he withdrew. 

When he had left, our gayety returned. A suggestion 
was made that we should go to a greenhouse that was at 
the foot of the garden. 

Madame Pierson treated her flowers as she did her 
birds and her peasants; everything had to be healthy 
around her, each must have its drop of water and its 
ray of sunshine, so that she might herself be as gay and 
happy as a good angel ; and so nothing was better kept 
or more charming than her little greenhouse. When 

we had made the tour of it, “Monsieur de T ,” 

she said to me, “ that is my little world ; you have seen 
all that I possess, and my domain ends here. ’ ’ 

“Madame,” I said to her, “let my father’s name, 
which has gained for me the favor of entering here, 
permit me to return hither, and I will believe that 
happiness has not altogether forgotten me.” 

She extended her hand to me, and I touched it with 
respect, not daring to carry it to my lips. 

Evening having come, I returned home, shut my door 
and went to bed. I had a small white house before my 
eyes; I saw myself going out after dinner, traversing 
the village and the promenade, and going to knock at 
the gate. “ O my poor heart ! ” I exclaimed, “ God be 
praised ! you are still young, you may live, you may 
love ! ” 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


l 7S 


VI 


I was one evening at Madame Pierson’s. More than 
three months had passed, during which I had seen her 
almost every day ; and of that time what shall I say to 
you, except that I saw her? “ To be with people whom 
one loves,” says La Bruyere, “that suffices; to dream, 
to speak to them, not to speak to them, to think of 
them, to think of the most indifferent things, but near 
them, it is all the same. ’ ’ 

I loved. During the past three months we had taken 
long walks together ; I was initiated in the mysteries of 
her modest charity ; we traversed the dark alleys, she on 
a small horse, I on foot, a stick in my hand ; thus, half 
story-telling, half dreaming, we went to knock at the 
cabins. There was a little bench at the entrance to the 
wood where I went to wait for her after dinner. We 
found each other in this way as if by chance and regu- 
larly. In the morning, music, reading ; in the evening, 
with the aunt, card parties by the fireside, as formerly 
with my father ; and always, in every place, she near, 
she smiling, and her presence filling my heart. By 
what way, O Providence ! have you led me to misfor- 
tune? what irrevocable destiny, then, was I charged 
to carry out ? What ! a life so free, an intimacy so 


176 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


charming, so much rest, nascent hope ! O God ! 

of what do men complain ? what is there sweeter than to 
love? 

To live, yes, to feel strongly, profoundly, that one 
exists, that one is a man, created by God, that is the 
first, the greatest benefit of love. Beyond a doubt, love 
is an inexplicable mystery. With whatever chains, 
with whatever mysteries, and I will even say with what- 
ever disgusts the world has surrounded it, all buried as 
it is there under a mountain of prejudices which dis- 
figure and deprave it, in all the filth through which 
one drags it, love, vivacious and fatal love, is none the 
less a celestial law as powerful and as incomprehensible 
as that which suspends the sun in the heavens. What, I 
ask you, is it but a bond stronger, more solid than iron, 
and which one can neither see nor touch? What is it to 
meet a woman, to look at her, to say a word to her and 
never more to forget her? Why that one rather than 
another? Invoke reason, habit, the senses, the head, 
the heart, and explain, if you can. You will find only 
two bodies, one there, the other here, and between 
them, what? air, space, immensity. O madmen who 
believe yourselves men and who dare to reason of love ! 
do you possess it so as to speak of it? No, you have 
felt it. You have exchanged a look with an unknown 
being who was passing, and suddenly there has flown 
from you a something indescribable that has no name. 
You have taken root in earth, like the grain hidden in 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


177 

the grass which feels that life is raising it, and that it is 
going to become a harvest. 

We were alone, the window open, there was at the 
farther end of the garden a small fountain, the noise of 
which reached us. O God ! I could count drop by drop 
all the water that has fallen in it whilst we were seated, 
whilst she was speaking and I was answering. It was there 
that I became intoxicated with her beyond all reason. 

It is said that there is nothing so rapid as a feeling of 
antipathy ; but I believe that one divines even more 
quickly that one is understood and that one is about 
to be loved. Of what value, then, are the slightest 
words ! What matters it of what the lips speak, when 
one hears hearts respond ? 

What infinite sweetness in the first looks of a woman 
who attracts you ! At first it seems as if all that they 
say in each other’s presence is like timid essays, like 
slight trials ; ere long is born a strange joy : one feels 
that one has sounded an echo ; one is animated with a 
double life. What a touch ! what an approach ! And, 
when one is sure of being loved, when one has recog- 
nized in the cherished being, the fraternity that one 
looks for there, what serenity in the soul ! Speech 
dies of its own accord; one knows in advance what 
one is going to say ; souls reach out, lips are silent. 
Oh ! what silence ! what forgetfulness of everything ! 

Though my love, which had begun from the first 
day, had increased to excess, the respect that I had for 


1 7 8 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


Madame Pierson had, however, closed my lips. If she 
had admitted me less easily to intimacy with her, I 
would perhaps have been more bold, for she had made 
so violent an impression on me that I never left her 
without transports of love. But, in her very frankness 
and in the confidence that she showed in me, there 
was something that stopped me ; besides, it was on my 
father’s name that she had treated me as a friend. This 
consideration made me still more respectful towards her; 
I was bound to show myself worthy of that name. 

“To speak of love,” it is said, “is to make love.” 
We seldom spoke of it. Every time that it happened to 
me to touch on this subject casually, Madame Pierson 
scarcely replied and spoke of something else. I did not 
question for what reason, for it was not prudery; but it 
seemed to me sometimes that her countenance assumed 
on those occasions a slight tinge of severity and even of 
suffering. As I had never put any question to her about 
her past life, and as I did not want to do so, I asked her 
about it no further. 

On Sunday there was dancing in the village; she 
nearly always went there. On those days her toilet, 
though always simple, was more elegant ; it was a flower 
in her hair, a brighter ribbon, the slightest trifle; but 
there was in her whole person a more youthful, a more 
easy air. Dancing, which she liked very much on its 
own account, and avowedly, as an amusing exercise, 
inspired her with a playful gayety ; she had her station 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


179 


under the small orchestra of the place ; she came there 
jumping, laughing with the country girls, who nearly all 
knew her. Once started, she did not check herself. 
Then it seemed to me that she spoke to me with more 
freedom than ordinarily ; there was, besides, an unwonted 
familiarity. I did not dance, being still in mourning ; 
but I remained behind her, and, seeing her so well 
disposed, I had felt more than once the temptation to 
confess to her that I loved her. 

But I know not why, as soon as I thought of it, I felt 
in me an invincible fear ; this very idea of an avowal 
made me suddenly serious in the midst of the liveliest 
conversations. I had sometimes thought of writing to 
her, but I burned my letters as soon as I had half written 
them. 

That evening I had dined at her house, I looked at 
all that tranquillity of her interior ; I thought of the 
quiet life that I was leading, of my happiness since I 
knew her, and I said to myself : Why more? does not 
that suffice thee ? Who knows ? God has perhaps done 
no more for thee. If I told her that I love her, what 
would come of it? she would perhaps forbid me to 
see her. Shall I, by telling it to her, make her more 
happy than she is to-day ? should I be more happy for it 
myself? ” 

I was leaning on the piano, and, as I was making 
these reflections, sadness took possession of me. Day 
was declining, she lit a candle; on returning to sit 


! go the confession of a 

down, she saw that a tear had escaped from my eyes. 
“What is the matter with you?” she said. I turned 
away my head. 

I was looking for an excuse and found none ; I was 
afraid to meet her gaze. I arose and was at the window. 
The air was mild, the moon was rising behind the linden 
alley, that one where I had seen her for the first time. I 
fell into a deep reverie, I forgot her very presence, and, 
extending my arms towards heaven, a sob escaped from 
my heart. 

She had arisen, and she was behind me. “What is 
it, then?” she again asked. I answered her that my 
father’s death had been recalled to my thought at the 
sight of that vast solitary valley ; I took leave of her and 
left. 

Why I was determined to be silent as to my love, I 
could not explain to myself. Yet, instead of returning 
home, I began to wander like a madman in the village 
and in the wood. I sat down where I found a bench, 
then I arose hurriedly. About midnight I approached 
Madame Pierson’s house ; she was at the window. On 
seeing her, I felt myself tremble; I wanted to retrace 
my steps ; I was as if fascinated ; I came slowly and 
sadly to sit down below her. 

I know not whether she recognized me ; I was but a 
few moments there when I heard her, with her sweet 
and fresh voice, singing the refrain of a romance, and 
almost immediately a flower fell on my shoulder. It 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


181 


was a rose which, that very evening, I had seen on her 
bosom ; I picked it up and carried it to my lips. 

“Who,” she said, “is there at this hour? is it you?” 
she called me by name. 

The garden gate was open ; I arose without replying 
and entered it. I stopped in the middle of the lawn ; I 
walked like a somnambulist and without knowing what 
I was doing. 

Suddenly I saw her appear at the stairway door ; she 
seemed uncertain and was looking attentively at the 
moon’s rays. She took a few steps towards me, I ad- 
vanced. I could not speak ; I fell on my knees before 
her and took hold of her hand. 

“Listen to me,” she said, “I know it; but, if it has 
reached this point, Octave, we must part. You come 
here every day, are you not welcome ? is it not enough ? 
What can I do for you ? my friendship is yours : I would 
have liked that you had had the strength to keep yours 
for me longer. ’ * 


VII 

Madame Pierson, after having spoken thus, kept 
silent, as if awaiting a reply. As I remained over- 
whelmed with sadness, she withdrew her hand gently, 
receded a few steps, stopped again, then returned slowly 
to her house. 


1 82 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


I remained on the grass. I was musing upon what 
she had said to me ; my resolve was taken at once, 
and I decided to leave. I arose with a distressed but 
firm heart, and I made a tour of the garden. I looked 
at the house, the window of her room ; I pulled the gate 
on leaving, and, after having shut it, I touched the lock 
with my lips. 

Having returned home, I told Larive to prepare what 
was necessary, as I counted on leaving as soon as day 
should break. The poor fellow was astonished at it, but 
I made him a sign to obey and not to question. He 
brought a large trunk and we began to arrange every- 
thing. 

It was five o’clock in the morning, and day was 
beginning to appear when I asked myself whither I 
should go. At such an ordinary thought as this, which 
had not yet come to me, I felt in me an irresistible dis- 
couragement. I cast my eyes on the country, scanning 
the horizon here and there. A great weakness took 
possession of me; I was exhausted from fatigue. I sat 
down in an arm-chair; gradually my ideas became 
mixed ; I raised my hand to my forehead, it was bathed 
in perspiration. A violent fever made all my members 
tremble; I had only strength enough to drag myself to 
my bed with Larive’ s aid. All my thoughts were so 
confused that I scarcely remembered what had hap- 
pened. The day rolled by ; towards evening I heard a 
noise of instruments. It was the Sunday ball, and I told 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


183 


Larive to go and see if Madame Pierson was there. He 
did not find her there ; I sent him to her house. The 
windows were shut ; the servant told him that her mis- 
tress had left with her aunt, and that they were to spend 

some days with a relative who lived at N , a small 

town a considerable distance off. At the same time he 
brought me a letter that had been given to him. It was 
couched in these terms : 

“ It is three months since I have been seeing you, and 
one month since I noticed that you regarded me with 
what, at your age, people call love. I had thought I 
remarked in you the resolve to conceal it from me 
and to conquer yourself. I had esteem for you; that 
added to it. I have no reproach to make to you for 
what has happened, nor for that which you lacked in 
will. 

“ What you believe to be love is only desire. I know 
that many women seek to inspire it ; pride would be 
better placed in them, so to act that they would have 
no need of it to please those who approached them ; 

I but this very vanity is dangerous, since I was wrong in 
| having it with you. 

“Iam older than you by several years, and I ask you 
not to see me any more. It would be in vain for you to 
try to forget a moment of weakness ; what has passed 
between us can neither happen a second time nor be 
forgotten altogether. 


184 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


“ I do not leave yon without sorrow; I shall be absent 
for some days ; if, on returning, I find you no longer in 
the country, I shall be sensitive to this last mark of 
friendship and esteem which you have shown to me. 

“ Brigitte Pierson.” 


viii 


The fever kept me a week in bed. As soon as I was 
in a condition to write, I answered Madame Pierson 
that she would be obeyed and that I was going to leave. 
I wrote to her in good faith and without any intention 
of deceiving her ; but I was very far from keeping my 
promise. Scarcely had I gone two leagues when I 
called out to stop and got out of the carriage. I took 
to walking on the road. I could not divert my looks 
from the village which I saw in the distance. At last, 
after a frightful irresolution, I felt that it was impossible 
for me to continue my journey, and, rather than get back 
into the carriage, I would have consented to die on the 
spot. I told the postilion to turn, and, instead of going 

to Paris, as I had announced, I made direct for N , 

where Madame Pierson was. 

I arrived there at ten o’clock in the evening. Scarcely 
had I alighted at the inn when I got a boy to point out 
to me her relative’s house, and, without reflecting on 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


i8 5 

what I was doing, I betook myself thither on the spot. 
A servant-girl came to open the door to me ; I asked 
her if Madame Pierson was there, to go and tell her that 
some one wanted to speak to her on behalf of Monsieur 
Desprez. That was the name of our village pastor. 

While the servant was carrying my message, I re- 
mained in a small and rather dark court ; as it was rain- 
ing, I advanced to a peristyle at the foot of the stairway, 
which was not lighted. Madame Pierson soon arrived, 
perceiving the servant ; she came down quickly and did 
not see me in. the darkness; I took a step toward her 
and touched her arm. She drew back in affright and 
exclaimed : “ What do you want of me?" 

The sound of her voice was so tremulous, and, when 
the servant appeared with her light, I saw she was so pale, 
that I knew not what to think. Was it possible that my 
unexpected presence had disturbed her to such a point ? 
This reflection passed through my mind, but I said to 
myself that it was no doubt an impulse of fright, natural 
to a woman who feels herself suddenly taken hold of. 

Yet, in a calmer voice, she repeated her question. 
“ You must,” I said to her, “permit me to see you once 
more. I will leave, I am abandoning the country ; you 
will be obeyed, I swear to you, and beyond your wishes ; 
for I will sell my father’s house, as well as everything 
else, and will go abroad. But it is only on condition 
that I shall see you once more ; if not, I stay ; fear 
nothing from me, but I am bent upon it.” 


i86 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


She knit her brow and cast a strange look on one side 
and then on the other; then she answered me in an 
almost gracious way: “Come to-morrow in the day- 
time, I will receive you.” Thereupon she left. 

Next day, I went there at noon. I was ushered into 
a room with old tapestry and antique furniture. I found 
her alone, seated on a sofa. I sat down opposite to her. 

“Madame,” I said to her, “I come neither to speak 
to you of what I am suffering nor to renounce the love 
that I have for you. You have written to me that what 
had taken place between us could not be forgotten, and 
it is true. But you tell me that because of that we can 
no longer see each other on the same footing as for- 
merly, and you are mistaken. I love you, but I have 
not offended you ; nothing is changed so far as regards 
you, since you do not love me. If I see you again, it 
is, then, only for me that one must answer to you, and 
what answers for me to you is precisely my love. ’ ’ 

She wanted to interrupt me. 

“ Permit me, as a favor, to finish. No one knows 
better than I that, notwithstanding all the respect that 
I bear you and despite all the protestations by which I 
might bind myself, love is the strongest. I repeat to you 
that I do not come to give up what I have in my heart. 
But it is not since to-day, according to what you tell me 
yourself, that you have known that I love you. What 
reason, then, has kept me until now from declaring it to 
you ? The fear of losing you ; I was afraid of being no 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


187 


longer received at your house, and that is what happens. 
Impose on me, as a condition, that at the first word that 
I shall speak of it, on the first occasion on which a sign 
shall escape me or a thought that deviates from the most 
profound respect, your door shall be shut against me; 
as I have been silent heretofore, I will be silent in the 
future. You believe that it is for a month past that I 
have loved you, but it is from the first day. When you 
took notice of it, you did not therefore cease to see me. 
If you had then for me enough esteem to believe me 
incapable of offending you, why should I have lost that 
esteem? that it is which I come to ask of you again. 
What have I done to you ? I have bent the knee ; I 
have not even said a word. What have I taught you ? 
you know it already. I was weak because I was suffer- 
ing. Well, madame, I am twenty, and what I have seen 
of life has made me so disgusted with it — I might use 
a stronger word — that there is not to-day on earth, 
neither in the society of men, nor in solitude itself, a 
place so small and so insignificant that I would deign to 
occupy it. The space contained between the four walls 
of your garden is the only place in the world where I 
live ; you are the only human being who would make 
me love God. I had given up everything even before 
knowing you ; why take from me the only ray of sun- 
shine that Providence has left to me ? If it is from fear, 
in what have I been able to inspire you with it ? If it is 
from pity, of what have I made myself guilty? If it is 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


1 88 

from pity and because I suffer, you are wrong in believ- 
ing that I can be cured ; I could have been, perhaps, 
two months ago ; I have preferred to see you and to 
suffer, and do not repent of it, whatever may happen. 
The only misfortune that can affect me is to lose you. 
Put me on trial. If ever I come to feel that there is for 
me too much suffering in our bargain, I will leave ; that 
you may be quite sure of, since, as you send me away 
to-day, I am ready to go. What risk do you run in 
giving me a month or two more of the only happiness 
that I shall ever have?” 

I awaited her reply. She rose brusquely, then sat 
down again. She was silent for a moment. “Be per- 
suaded of it,” she said, “that is not so.” I believed 
I noticed that she was seeking expressions that would 
* not seem too severe and that she wanted to answer me 
tenderly. 

“A word,” I said to her as I rose, “a word, and 
nothing more. I know who you are, and, if there be 
any compassion for me in your heart, I thank you; 
speak on£ w'ord ! this moment decides my life.” 

She shook her head ; I saw her hesitate. “You think 
that I will get cured of it?” I exclaimed. “ May God 
leave you this thought, if you drive me from here * ’ 

While saying these words I was looking at the horizon, 
and I felt to the very bottom of my soul a solitude so 
horrible at the idea that I was going to leave, that my 
blood froze. She saw me standing, my eyes fixed on 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 189 

her, waiting for her to speak ; all the strength of my 
life was suspended on her lips. 

“Well,” she said, “listen to me. This journey that 
you have made is an act of imprudence ; it must not be 
on my account that you have come here ; charge your- 
self with a commission that I will give you to a friend 
of my family. If you find that it is somewhat far off, 
let it be to you the occasion of an absence which will 
last as long as you wish, but which will not be too short. 
Whatever you say of it,” she added, smiling, “a little 
journey will calm you. You will stay in the Vosges, 
and you will go as far as Strasburg. In a month, or 
two months, better, return to give me an account of 
what you will be charged with ; I will see you again 
and will better answer you.” 


IX 


I received that very evening, on the part of Madame 
Pierson, a letter addressed to M. R. D., at Strasburg. 
Three weeks later, my commission was attended to and 
I had returned. 

I had thought only of her during my journey, and I 
lost all hope of ever forgetting her. Yet my course was 
taken to keep silent in her presence ; the danger that I 
had incurred of losing her by the imprudence that I had 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


190 

committed had made me suffer too cruelly for me to 
bear the idea of exposing myself to it anew. The 
esteem that I had for her did not allow me to believe 
that she was not sincere, and, in the step that she 
had taken in leaving the country, I saw nothing that 
resembled hypocrisy. In a word, I was firmly per- 
suaded that on the first expression of love that I should 
make to her, her door would be closed against me. 

I found her again thinner and changed. Her habit- 
ual smile seemed languishing on her colorless lips. She 
told me that she had been suffering. 

There was no question of what had happened. She 
had the air of not wanting to remember it, and I did 
not care to speak of it. We soon resumed our former 
habit of neighborship; yet there was between us a cer- 
tain restraint and, as it were, a formal familiarity. It 
seemed that we said sometimes: “It was thus of old, 
let it then be so still.” She gave me her confidence 
like a rehabilitation that was not without charm to me. 
But our conversations were colder, for this very reason 
that our looks had, whilst we were speaking, been carry- 
ing on a tacit conversation. In all that we could say 
there was nothing more to be guessed at. We no longer 
sought, as of old, to penetrate into each other’s minds; 
there was no longer that interest in each word, in 
each sentiment, that curious esteem of former days ; 
she treated me kindly, but I distrusted her very 
kindness; I walked with her in the garden, but I no 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


191 

longer accompanied her away from home ; we no longer 
traversed the woods and the valleys together; she opened 
the piano when we were alone ; the sound of her voice 
no longer awakened in my heart those outbursts of youth, 
those transports of joy that are, as it were, sobs full of 
hope. When I left she always extended her hand, but 
I felt it inanimate ; there was much effort in our ease, 
many reflections in our slightest chats, much sadness at 
the bottom of all that. 

We felt indeed that there was a third presence with 
us : it was the love that I had for her. Nothing in my 
actions betrayed it, but ere long it appeared on my 
countenance : I lost my gayety, my strength, and the 
appearance of health that I had on my cheeks. A 
month had not elapsed when I no longer looked like 
myself. 

Yet, in our conversations, I always insisted on my 
disgust for the world, on the aversion that I felt to 
again re-enter it. I took it on me as a task to make 
Madame Pierson feel that she must not reproach herself 
for having received me anew. Sometimes I pictured to 
her my past life in the darkest colors, and gave her to 
understand that, if it was necessary for me to separate 
from her, I would remain devoted to a solitude worse 
than death : I told her that I had a horror of society, 
and the faithful story of my life, which I had given her, 
proved to her that I was sincere. Sometimes I affected 
a gayety that was very far from my heart, in order to 


192 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


say to her that in allowing me to see her, she had saved 
me from the most frightful misfortune ; I thanked her 
on nearly every occasion that I went to her house, so as 
to be able to return there in the evening or next day. 
“All my dreams of happiness,” I said to her, “all my 
hopes, all my ambition, are contained in that little 
corner of earth in which you dwell; outside the air 
that you breathe, there is no life for me.” 

She saw what I was suffering and could not help pity- 
ing me. My courage excited her sympathy, and a sort 
of tenderness entered into all her words, into her very 
actions and her attitude, when I was there. She felt 
the struggle that was taking place in me : my obedience 
flattered her pride, but in her my paleness awoke her 
instinct of a Sister of Charity. I saw her sometimes 
irritated, almost coquettish ; she said to me in an 
almost mutinous tone : “I shall not be here to-morrow, 
do not come on such a day.” Then, as I was retiring, 
sad and resigned, she suddenly softened; she added: 

* * I know nothing of it, come always ; ” or indeed her 
adieu was more familiar, she followed me as far as the 
gate with a sadder and sweeter look. 

“Have no doubt of it,” I said to her, “it is Provi- 
dence that has brought me to you. If I had not known 
you, perhaps, at the present hour, I would have fallen 
back into my excesses. God has sent you, as an angel 
of light, to rescue me from the abyss. It is a holy 
mission that has been confided to you; who knows, if 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


*93 


I lost you, whither I might be drawn by the sorrow 
that would devour me, the fatal experience that I 
have at my age, and the terrible combat of my youth 
with my weariness ? ’ ’ 

This thought, quite sincere in me, was of the greatest 
force on a woman of an exalted devotion and of a soul 
as pious as it was ardent. It was perhaps for this sole 
cause that Madame Pierson allowed me to see her. 

I was making arrangements one day to go to her 
house, when some one knocked at my door, and I saw 
Mercanson enter, that same priest whom' I had met in 
her garden on my first visit. He began with excuses 
as tiresome as himself, on his presenting himself thus 
at my house without knowing me ; I told him that I 
knew him very well as our pastor’s nephew and asked 
him the object of his visit. 

He turned from one side to the other with an embar- 
rassed air, picking his phrases and touching with his finger 
ends everything that was on my table, like a man who 
knows not what to say. At last he told me that Madame 
Pierson was ill and that she had charged him to notify 
me that she could not see me again during the day. 

“ She is ill? But I left her yesterday rather late, and 
she was very well ! ” 

He made a bow. “But, Monsieur l’Abbe, why, if 
she is illj send me word of it by a third party ? She 
does not live so far away, and it was of little importance 
letting me make a useless journey.” 


194 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


The same reply on the part of Mercanson. I could 
not understand this step on his part, still less this 
commission with which he had been entrusted. “All 
right,” I said to him, “I will see her to-morrow, and 
she will explain all that to me.” 

His hesitancy began again: “Madame Pierson had 

told him besides he was to tell me he had 

undertaken ” 

“Well! what, then?” I exclaimed impatiently. 

“Monsieur, you are violent. I think that Madame 
Pierson is rather seriously ill; she will not be able to 
see you for the whole week.” 

Another bow ; and he left. 

It was clear that this visit concealed some mystery : 
either Madame Pierson no longer wished to see me, 
for what reason I know not, or Mercanson interfered of 
his own motion. 

I allowed the day to pass ; next day, early, I was at 
the door, where I met the servant ; but she told me that 
indeed her mistress was very ill, and, whatever I could 
do, she wanted neither to take the money that I offered 
her nor to listen to my questions. 

As I was re-entering the village, I saw Mercanson 
himself on the promenade ; he was surrounded by 
the school children, to whom his uncle was giving a 
lesson. I approached him while he was in the midst 
of his harangue and entreated him to speak a couple 
of words to me. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


*95 


He followed me to the square ; but it was my turn to 
hesitate, for I knew not how to get at him so as to draw 
his secret from him. “Sir,” I said to him, “I entreat 
you to tell me if what you told me yesterday is the truth 
or if there be some other reason for it. Besides, there 
being in the district no doctor who can be called upon, 
I have reasons of great importance for asking you what 
is the matter.” 

He defended himself in every form and fashion, pre- 
tending that Madame Pierson was ill, and that he knew 
nothing more, except that she had sent him to find me 
and charged him to notify me in the manner he had. 
While talking, however, we had reached the head of the 
main street, at a lonely place. Seeing that neither ruse 
nor entreaty was of any avail to me, I suddenly turned 
around and took hold of him by both arms. 

“What is this, monsieur? do you mean to use vio- 
lence?” 

“ No, but I mean you to speak to me.” 

“ Monsieur, I am afraid of no one, and I have told 
you what I had to say.” 

“You have said what you had to say and not what 
you know. Madame Pierson is not ill ; I know it, I 
am sure of it.” 

‘ 4 What do you know of it ? ” 

“The servant has told me so. Why does she shut 
her door against me, and why does she communicate 
through you?” 


196 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


Mercanson saw a peasant passing. “ Pierre, ’ ’ he called 
to him by his name, “ listen to me, I have something to 
say to you. ’ ’ 

The peasant approached us; that was all that he 
asked, thinking indeed that before a third party I 
should not dare to maltreat him. I released him in- 
deed, but so rudely that he recoiled from it, and his 
back struck against a tree. He clenched his fist and 
left without saying a word. 

I spent the whole week in extreme agitation, going 
three times a day to Madame Pierson’s, and being con- 
stantly refused at her door. I received a letter from 
her; she told me that my assiduity had occasioned 
tattling in the whole country and entreated me to make 
my visits rarer thereafter. Not a word, moreover, of 
Mercanson or of her malady. 

This precaution was so far from natural to her and 
contrasted in such a strange manner with the proud 
indifference that she showed to every sort of talk of 
this kind, that I at first found it difficult to believe in it. 
Not knowing, however, what other interpretation to put 
on it, I answered her that I had nothing so much at 
heart as to obey her. But, in spite of myself, the ex- 
pressions which I made use of smacked somewhat of 
bitterness. 

I even voluntarily delayed the day on which I was 
allowed to go and see her and I did not send to ask 
news of her, in order to convince her that I did not 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


197 


believe in her malady. I did not know for what reason 
she thus kept me away ; but I was, in truth, so unhappy 
that I sometimes thought seriously of putting an end to 
this unendurable life. I remained whole days in the 
woods ; chance made her meet me there one day, in a 
pitiable state. 

It was with difficulty that I had the courage to ask her 
for some explanations ; she did not answer frankly, and 
I did not again return to that subject. I was reduced 
to counting the days that I spent far from her and to 
living for weeks on the hope of a visit. At every mo- 
ment I felt the desire to cast myself at her knees and to 
picture my despair to her. I said to myself that she 
could not be insensible to it, that she would pay me 
at least with some words of pity; but, thereupon, the 
memory of her brusque departure and her severity re- 
turned to me; I trembled at losing her, and I preferred 
to die rather than expose myself to that. 

Thus, not having even permission to acknowledge my 
suffering, my health at last gave way. My feet carried 
me to her house -only painfully : I felt that I was going 
there to draw from the fountain of tears, and each visit 
cost me new ones; each time that I left her, I felt my 
heart tortured as if I were never to see her again. 

On her part, she no longer spoke to me in the same 
tone or with the same ease as before ; she spoke of plans 
for traveling; she affected to confide in me, to some 
little extent, as to the desires that possessed her, she said, 


198 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


of leaving the country, which made me more dead than 
alive when I heard them. If she gave herself up for an 
instant to a natural impulse, she fell back at once into a 
despairing coldness. I could not help one day weeping 
from grief in her presence at the manner in which she 
was treating me. I saw her grow pale on this account 
in spite of herself. As I was leaving, she said to me at 
the door: “I am going to-morrow to Saint-Luce,” — it 
was a village in the neighborhood, — “and it is too far to 
go on foot. Be here on horseback in the early morning, 
if you have nothing to do : you will accompany me.” 

I was punctual at the meeting-place, as one may 
imagine. I had gone to bed on these words with trans- 
ports of joy; but, on leaving my house, I felt, on the 
contrary, an invincible sadness. By giving back to me 
the privilege that I had lost, of accompanying her on 
her solitary journeys, she had clearly given way to a 
fancy that to me seemed cruel, if she did not love me. 
She knew that I was suffering ; why abuse my courage 
if she had not changed her mind? 

This reflection, which I made in spite of myself, cre- 
ated in me an unusual humor. When she was mount- 
ing on horseback, my heart beat when I took hold of 
her foot ; I do not know whether it was desire or anger. 
“ If she is touched,” I said to myself, “why so much re- 
serve? if she is only coquettish, why so much liberty?” 

Such are men. At my first word, she noticed that 
I was looking away and that my countenance was 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


x 99 


changed. I did not speak to her and I took the other 
side of the road. As long as we were in the plain, she 
appeared tranquil and only turned her head from time 
to time to see if I was following her ; but, when we 
entered the forest and when our horses’ hoofs began to 
resound under the dark alleys, among the solitary rocks, 
I saw her suddenly tremble. She stopped as if to wait 
for me, for I kept a little behind her ; as soon as I re- 
joined her, she started at a gallop. Ere long we reached 
the mountain slope, and it was necessary to walk. I 
came then and placed myself beside her ; but both of us 
bowed our heads ; it was time, I took hold of her hand. 

“ Brigitte,” I said to her, “ have I tired you with my 
plaints? Since I have returned, since I have seen you 
every day and every evening, on going home, I ask my- 
self, at the cost of my life, have I importuned you ? For 
two months past that I have been losing rest, strength, 
and hope, have I said to you a word of this fatal love 
| that is devouring me and that is killing me, do you not 
j know it ? Raise your head ; is it necessary to tell you 
so? Do you not see that I am suffering and that my 
nights are spent in weeping ? have you not met some- 
where in these gloomy forests an unfortunate man seated 
with both his hands on his brow ? have you never found 
tears on those heaths? Look at me, look at those 
mountains; do you remember that I love you? They 
know it, they, those witnesses ; those rocks, those deserts 
know it. Why bring me into their presence ? am I not 


200 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


wretched enough? have I now failed of courage? are 
you sufficiently obeyed? To what trial, to what torture 
am I subjected, and for what crime ? If you do not love 
me, what are you doing here?” 

“Let us go,” she said, “take me back, let us retrace 
our steps.” I seized her horse’s bridle. 

“ No,” I replied, “for I have spoken. If we return, 
I lose you, I know it ; on reaching your home, I know 
in advance what you will tell me. You have wanted to 
see how far my patience went, you have set my sorrow 
at defiance, perhaps to have the right of driving me 
away ; you were tired of this sorry lover who was suffer- 
ing without complaining and who with resignation was 
drinking the bitter chalice of your disdain ! you knew 
that, alone with you, at the sight of these woods, in the 
face of these solitudes where my love began, I could 
not keep silent ! you have wanted to be offended : well, 
madame, let me lose you ! I have wept enough, I have 
suffered enough, I have quite sufficiently driven back 
into my heart the mad love that is gnawing me ; you 
have been cruel enough ! ’ ’ 

As she made a motion to jump down from her horse, 
I took her in my arms and pressed my lips to hers. 
But, at the same moment, I saw her grow pale, her eyes 
were closed, she loosed the bridle that she was holding 
and slipped to the ground. 

“ God of goodness ! ” I exclaimed, “ she loves me ! ” 
She had returned my kiss. 


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“/ know that you love me , Brigitte , you are more 
secure here than all the kings in their palaces." 

Madame Pierson , at these words , fixed her humid eyes 
on me; I saw therein the happiness of my life coming 
to me in a glance. I crossed the road , and went to cast 
myself on my knees before her. 


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CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


20T 


I leaped to the ground and ran to her. She was 
stretched on the grass. I raised her up, she opened 
her eyes ; a sudden terror made her shudder all over ; 
she forcibly repelled my hand, burst into tears and 
escaped from me. 

I had remained on the roadside ; I was looking at 
her, beautiful as the day, leaning against a tree, her 
long hair falling over her shoulders, her hands agitated 
and trembling, her cheeks covered with blushes, with 
the brilliancy of purple and pearls. “Do not approach 
me!” she exclaimed, “do not take a step towards 
me!” 

“Oh, my love!” I said to her, “fear nothing, if I 
offended you a moment ago, you can punish me for 
it ; I have had a moment’s madness and pain ; treat me 
as you will, you can go now, so send me whither it 
will please you ! I know that you love me, Brigitte ; 
you are more secure here than all the kings in their 
palaces. ’ ’ 

Madame Pierson, at these words, fixed her humid 
eyes on me; I saw therein the happiness of my life 
coming to me in a glance. I crossed the road and went 
to cast myself on my knees before her. How little he 
loves who can say what words his mistress used to 
acknowledge to him that she loved him ! 


202 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


X 

If I were a jeweler, and if I took from my treasure 
a pearl necklace to make a present of it to a friend, it 
seems to me that it would give me great joy to place 
it myself around her neck; but, if I were the friend, 
I would die rather than snatch the collar from the 
jeweler’s hands. 

I have seen that most men are eager to take to them- 
selves the woman who loves them ; and I have always 
done the contrary, not from calculation, but from a 
natural feeling. The woman who loves, a little and who 
resists, does not love enough, and she who loves enough 
and who resists, knows that she is loved less. 

Madame Pierson showed me more confidence, after 
having acknowledged to me that she loved me, than she 
had ever shown. The respect that I had for her in- 
spired in her so sweet a joy that her beautiful counte- 
nance thereby became, as it were, a flower in full 
bloom ; I saw her sometimes give herself up to a giddy 
gayety, then suddenly stop pensive, affecting, at certain 
moments, to treat me almost as a child, then looking at 
me with her eyes full of tears ; imagining a thousand 
pleasantries to find a pretext for a more familiar word 
or for an innocent caress, then leaving me to sit apart 
and to give herself up to reveries that took hold of her. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


203 


Is there in the world a sweeter spectacle ? When she 
returned to me, she found me on her way, in some 
alley from which I had watched her from afar. “ O my 
love! ” I said to her, “God, Himself, rejoices at seeing 
how much you are loved.” 

I could not, however, conceal from her either the 
violence of my desires or what I was suffering through 
struggling against them. One evening, when I was at 
her house, I told her that I had learned in the morn- 
ing of the loss of a lawsuit important to me and that 
brought a considerable change into my affairs. “How 
does that happen,” she asked me, “that you tell me of 
it laughing ? * * 

“There is,” I said to her, “a maxim of a Persian 
poet : 4 He who is loved by a beautiful woman is shel- 
tered from the blows of fate ! ’ ” 

Madame Pierson did not answer me ; she showed her- 
self during the whole evening still more gay than usual. 
As I was playing cards with her aunt and was losing, 
there was no sort of mischief that she did not use to 
pique me, saying that I understood nothing about it 
and always betting against me, so much so that she 
won from me all that I had in my purse. When the 
old lady had retired, she went out on the balcony, and 
I followed her thither in silence. 

It was one of the finest nights imaginable : the moon 
was setting and the stars were shining with the more 
sparkling brightness in a sky of deep azure. Not a 


204 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


breath of wind was stirring the trees ; the air was 
warm and balmy. 

She was leaning on her elbow, her eyes towards the 
heavens; I had reclined beside her and was looking 
at her dreaming. Ere long I raised my eyes, too ; 
a melancholy lust was intoxicating both of us. We 
breathed together the tepid whiffs that came from 
the hedgerows; we followed afar off in space the last 
glimmers of a pale whiteness which the moon was 
drawing with her as she went down behind the black 
masses of the chestnut-trees. I remembered a certain 
day that I had looked with despair on the immense void 
of that beautiful sky ; that memory made me bound ; 
everything was so full now ! I felt that a hymn of thanks 
was rising in my heart and that our love was mount- 
ing to God. I drew my arm around the waist of my 
dear mistress ; she turned her head gently : her eyes 
were bathed in tears. Her body bent like a reed, her 
parted lips fell on mine, and the univeirse was forgotten. 


XI 


Eternal angel of happy nights, who will relate thy 
silence? O kiss! mysterious draught which the lips 
distill as from blended cups ! intoxication of the senses, 
O Passion ! yes, like God, thou art immortal ! sublime 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


205 


transports of the creature, universal communion of 
beings, Passion thrice holy, what have they said of thee 
who have vaunted thee ? they have called thee fleeting, 
O creatrix ! and they have said that thy brief appear- 
ance illuminated their fugitive life. A word itself more 
brief than the breath of a dying man ! a true word of a 
sensual brute, who is astonished at living an hour, and 
takes the glimmers of the eternal lamp for a spark that 
flashes from a pebble ! Love, O principle of the world ! 
a precious flame that entire nature, like an anxious 
vestal, watches over incessantly in the temple of God! 
focus of everything, by which everything exists ! the 
spirits of destruction would themselves die by breathing 
on thee ! I am not astonished that people blaspheme 
thy name; for they know not what thou art, those who 
believe they have seen thee face to face because they 
have opened their eyes ; when thou findest thy true 
apostles, united on earth in a kiss, thou orderest their 
pupils to close like veils, that people may not see the 
happiness. 

But you, delights, languishing smiles, first caresses, 
timid familiarities; first stammerings of the lover, you 
that one can see, you that are ours ! are you, then, less 
God’s than the rest, beautiful cherubs who hover in the 
alcove and who bring back to this world man awakened 
from the divine dream ! Ah ! dear children of Passion, 
how your mother loves you ! It is you, wondering 
chats that quicken the first mysteries, ever trembling 


206 


THE CONFESSION 


and chaste touches, looks already insatiable, that begin 
to trace in the heart, as it were, a timid rough draught, 
the ineffaceable image of cherished beauty ! O king- 
dom ! O conquest ! it is you that make lovers. And 
you, true diadem, you, serenity of happiness ! first look 
directed on life, first return of bliss to so many indiffer- 
ent objects, which they no longer see but through their 
joy, first steps taken in nature by the side of the well- 
beloved ! who will paint you ? what human speech will 
ever express the feeblest caress? 

He who, on a fresh morning, in the fullness of youth, 
has gone out with slow strides, whilst the adored hand 
shut the secret door on him ; who has wandered without 
knowing whither, looking at the woods and the plains ; 
who has traversed a place without hearing any one speak 
to him ; who has sat down in a solitary place, laughing 
and weeping without reason; who has laid his hands 
on his face to breathe a lingering trace of perfume; 
who has suddenly forgotten what he had done on earth 
until then ; who has spoken to the trees on the roadside 
and to the birds that he saw pass ; who, in fine, in the 
midst of men, has shown himself a gleeful madman, 
then who has fallen on his knees and who has thanked 
God for it; that man will die without complaining: — 
he has possessed the woman he loved. 


PART FOURTH 











































PART FOURTH 


I 


I have now to relate what came of my love and the 
change that took place in me. What reason can I give 
for it ? None, except that I relate and that I can say : 
“ It is the truth.” 

It was two days, neither more nor less, since I was 
Madame Pierson’s lover. I left the bath at eleven o’clock 
in the evening, and on a magnificent night I traversed 
the promenade to betake myself to her house. I felt so 
well in body and so content in soul that I jumped with 
joy as I walked and stretched my arms towards heaven. 
I found her at the top of her staircase, her elbows on 
the balustrade, a candle on the floor beside her. She 

was waiting for me, and, as soon as she saw me, ran to 

209 


210 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


meet me. We were soon in her room, and the bolts 
fastened on us. 

She showed me how she had changed the dressing of 
her hair, which displeased me, and how she had spent 
the day in giving to it the turn that I liked ; how she 
had taken from the alcove a large, mean, black frame 
that seemed to be of ill omen ; how she had renewed her 
flowers, and there were some on every side ; she told me 
all that she had done since we knew each other, what 
she had seen me suffer, what she herself had suffered ; 
how she had wanted a thousand times to leave the 
country and fly from her love ; how she had invented 
so many precautions against me ; that she had taken 
advice from her aunt, from Mercanson, and from the 
pastor ; that she had sworn to herself to die rather than 
yield, and how all that had flown at a certain word that 
I had said to her, at a particular look, at a particular 
circumstance ; and at each confidence a kiss. What I 
found to my taste in her room, what had attracted my 
attention among the trifles with which her tables were 
covered, she wanted to give me, to take them away that 
very evening and to put them on my mantel-piece ; what 
she would do thereafter, morning, evening, at every 
hour, for me to regulate at my pleasure, and for her to 
be concerned about nothing ; that the talk of the world 
did not touch her ; that, if she had made a feint of 
believing in it, it was to keep me at a distance ; but that 
she wanted to be happy and to stop up both her ears; 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


21 1 


that she was just thirty, that she had not long to be loved 
by me. “ And you, will you love me long? Are they 
in the least true, those beautiful words with which you 
have made me so very blithe ? ’ ’ And thereupon the 
dear reproaches that I came late and that I was co- 
quettish ; that I had perfumed myself too much in the 
bath, or not enough, or not to her liking ; that she had 
remained in slippers so that I might see her bare foot, 
and that it was as white as her hand ; but that, more- 
over, she was scarcely beautiful ; that she would like to 
be a hundred times more so ; that she had been so at 
fifteen. She went to and fro, quite silly from love, 
quite roseate with joy ; and she knew not what to imag- 
ine, what to do, what to say, to give herself and to 
give herself again, body and soul, and all that she had. 

I was lying on the sofa ; I felt falling and being de- 
tached from me an evil hour of my past life, at each 
word that she spoke. I was looking at the star of love 
rise over my field, and it seemed to me that I was, as it 
were, a tree full of sap, that is throwing off to the wind 
its dry leaves so as to clothe itself with a new verdure. 

She sat at the piano, and told me that she was going 
to play for me an air by Stradella. I like sacred music 
above all, and this piece, which she had already sung for 
me, had to me seemed very beautiful. “Well,” she said 
when she had finished, “you are very much deceived in 
it ; the air is mine, and I have imposed upon you. ’ ’ 

“ It is by you?” 


212 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


“ Yes, and I have told you that it was by Stradella to 
see what you would say of it. I never play my own 
music, when it happens to me to compose any ; but I 
have wanted to make an attempt, and you see that I 
have succeeded, since you were its dupe.” 

What a monstrous machine is man ! What was there 
more innocent? A half-instructed child might have 
imagined this trick to surprise her preceptor. She 
laughed at it heartily as she told me of it ; but I felt, 
all of a sudden, as if a cloud had come over me; I 
changed countenance: “What ails you?” she said, 
“what overcomes you?” 

“ Nothing ; play that air for me once more.” 

While she was playing, I was walking backwards and 
forwards; I passed my hand over my brow as if to 
remove a dampness from it, I stamped my foot, I 
shrugged my shoulders at my own folly ; at last, I sat 
down on the floor on a cushion that had fallen ; she 
came to me. The more I wanted to struggle with the 
spirit of darkness that was laying hold of me at that 
moment, the more did the darkness eclipse my mind. 
“Truly,” I said to her, “you lie so well? What ! that 
air is by you? you know, then, how to lie so easily?” 

She looked at me with an air of astonishment. 
“What is it, then?” she said. An inexpressible rest- 
lessness was pictured on her features. Assuredly she 
could not believe that I was fool enough to make so 
simple a pleasantry a veritable reproach to her ; she saw 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


213 


nothing serious in that but the sadness that took posses- 
sion of me ; but the more frivolous its cause was, the 
more there was in it to be surprised at. She wanted to 
believe for an instant that I was joking, in my turn; 
but when she saw me ever grow paler and, as it were, 
ready to faint, she stood with her lips parted, her body 
inclined, like a statue. “God of heaven!” she ex- 
claimed, “is it possible?” 

You, reader, perhaps smile on perusing this page; 
as for me who write it, I still shudder at it. Misfortunes, 
as well as maladies, have their symptoms, and there is 
nothing so much dreaded at sea as a little black speck 
on the horizon. 

When day dawned, however, my dear Brigitte drew 
into the middle of the room a small round table of 
white wood ; she placed on it the wherewith to have 
supper, or rather the necessaries for breakfast, for the 
birds were already singing and the bees humming on 
the lawn. She had prepared everything herself, and 
I drank not a drop without her carrying the glass to 
her lips. The bluish light of day, piercing the striped 
cotton curtains, lit up her charming countenance and 
her large, somewhat drooping eyes ; she felt a desire to 
sleep, and, while embracing me, let her head fall on my 
shoulders, with a thousand languishing remarks. 

I could not struggle against so charming an abandon- 
ment, and my heart was reopened to joy; I believed 
myself entirely freed from the bad dream that I had 


214 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


just had, and I asked her pardon for a moment’s folly, 
for which I was unable to account. “My love,” I said 
to her from the bottom of my heart, “ I am very un- 
happy for having made you an unjust reproach about 
an innocent jest ; but, if you love me, never lie to me, 
even concerning the slightest things : lying seems horri- 
ble to me, and I cannot bear it.” 

She lay down: it was three o’clock in the morning, 
and I told her that I wanted to remain until she was 
asleep. I saw her shut her beautiful eyes, I heard her 
in her first slumber murmur while smiling, and at the 
same time, leaning on the pillow, I gave her my fare- 
well kiss. At last I left with my heart at peace, prom- 
ising to enjoy my happiness without anything thereafter 
being able to disturb it. 

But the very next day Brigitte said to me as if by 
chance: “I have a big book in which I write my 
thoughts, all that passes through my head, and I want 
to let you read what I have written in it of you during 
the first days that I saw you. ’ ’ 

We read together what regarded me, and we added a 
hundred silly things to it ; after which I set to turning 
over the leaves of the book in an indifferent manner. 
A phrase, inscribed in large characters, struck my gaze 
in the middle of the pages that I was turning over 
rapidly ; I read distinctly some words that were rather 
insignificant, and I was going to continue when Brigitte 
said to me : “Do not read that.” 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


215 


I threw the book on a piece of furniture. “ It is 
true,” I said to her, “ I do not know what I am 
doing.” 

“Do you still take it seriously?” she answered, 
laughing, no doubt seeing my trouble reappearing; 
“ take back that book ; I want you to read it.” 

“ Let us say no more of it. What, then, can I find 
in it so curious? Your secrets are your own, my dear.” 

The book remained on the piece of furniture, and no 
matter how I tried I could not take my eyes from it. I 
suddenly heard, as it were, a voice that was whispering 
in my ear, and I believed I saw grimacing before me, 
with his glacial smile, the dry figure of Desgenais. 
“What does Desgenais come to do here?” I asked 
myself, as if I had really seen him. He had appeared 
to me such as he was one evening, his brow inclined 
under my lamp, when, in his sharp voice, he was laying 
down his libertine catechism to me. 

| I had my eyes still on the book, and I was feeling 
i vaguely in my memory some forgotten words heard of 
old, but which had pressed on my heart. The spirit of 
doubt, suspended over my head, had just poured a drop 
of poison into my veins ; its vapor was mounting to my 
brain, and I was half staggering in the beginning of a 
baneful intoxication. What secret was Brigitte con- 
cealing from me ? I well knew that I had only to stoop 
and open the book ; but at what place ? how recognize 
the leaf to which chance had directed me ? 


2l6 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


My pride, moreover, would not have me take up the 
book; was it, then, really my pride? “O God!” I 
said with frightful sadness, “is it that the past is a 
spectre ? is it emerging from its tomb ? Ah ! wretched 
one, is it that I am going to be unable to love?” 

All my ideas of contempt for women, all those 
phrases of mocking fatuity that I had repeated like a 
lesson and like a part during the days of my excesses, 
suddenly passed through my mind ; and, what a strange 
thing ! whilst of old I did not believe in them while 
parading them, it seemed to me now that they were 
real, or that at least they had been so. 

I was acquainted with Madame Pierson for four 
months past, but I knew nothing of her past life and 
had asked her nothing about it. I had given myself up 
to my love for her with unbounded confidence and 
ardor. I had found a sort of enjoyment in putting no 
question about her to any one or to herself : moreover, 
suspicions and jealousy count for so little in my char- 
acter that I was more astonished at feeling them than 
was Brigitte at finding them in me. Never, either in 
my first loves or in the habitual commerce of life, had I 
been distrustful, but rather, on the contrary, bold, and, 
so to say, not doubting anything. It must have been 
that I saw with my own eyes my mistress’s treason, to 
believe that she could deceive me. Desgenais himself, 
while sermonizing to me in his own way, was continu- 
ally teasing me about my facility in letting myself be 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


217 


duped. The history of my whole life was a proof that I 
was credulous rather than suspicious ; and so, when the 
sight of that book thus struck me all of a sudden, it 
seemed to me that I felt in me a new being and a sort 
of unknown one; my reason revolted against what I 
was feeling, and I dared not ask myself whither all that 
was going to lead me. 

But the sufferings that I had endured, the memory of 
the perfidies to which I had been a witness, the frightful 
cure that I had imposed upon myself, the speeches of 
my friends, the corrupted world through which I had 
passed, the sad truths that I had seen there, those 
which, without knowing them, I had understood and 
seen into by a fatal intelligence, in fine, debauch, 
contempt of love, abuse of everything, that was what 
I had in my heart without yet suspecting it; and, 
at the moment when I believed I was born again to 
hope and to life, all these benumbing furies took me 
by the throat and called out to me that they were 
there. 

I stooped and opened the book, then I shut it imme- 
diately and threw it on the table. Brigitte looked at 
me; there was in her beautiful eyes neither wounded 
pride nor wrath ; there was only tender restlessness, as 
if I had been ill. “ Is it that you believe I have 
secrets?” she asked as she embraced me. “No,” I said 
to her, “ I believe nothing, except that you are beautiful 
and that I want to die loving you.” 


21 8 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


On returning home, as I was sitting down to dinner, 
I asked Larive : “What, then, is that Madame Pier- 
son?” 

He turned round quite astonished. “You,” I said to 
him, “have been in the country for a number of years; 
you ought to know her better than I. What do people 
say of her here? what do they think of her in the 
village? what life did she lead before I knew her? what 
' folks did she see?” 

“ Faith, monsieur, I have seen her do only what she is 
doing every day, that is, walking in the valley, playing 
piquet with her aunt, and bestowing charity on the poor. 
The peasants call her Brigitte la Rose ; I have never 
heard a word spoken against her by any one whomso- 
ever, except that she runs the fields all alone, at every 
hour of the day and of the night; but it is with so 
laudable a purpose ! She is the Providence of the 
country. As for the people whom she sees, it is scarcely 
any one but the pastor, and Monsieur de Dalens during 
vacation. ’ ’ 

“Who is Monsieur de Dalens?” 

“He is the owner of a chateau that is down there 
behind the mountain; he comes here only for hunting.” 

“Is he young?” 

“Yes, monsieur.” 

“ Is he related to Madame Pierson ? ’ ’ 

“ No ; he was a friend of her husband.” 

“ Is it long since her husband died?” 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


219 


“Five years on All Saints’ Day ; he was a worthy man. ’ ’ 

“And do they say whether this Monsieur de Dalens 
has paid court to her ? ’ ’ 

“To the widow, monsieur? marry! to say the 
truth ” He stopped with an embarrassed air. 

“Will you speak?” 

“ Some have said, and some have not said I 

know nothing of it, I have seen nothing of it. ’ ’ 

“ And you told me a moment ago that people did not 
talk of her in the country ? ’ * 

“ People have never said anything further, and I 
thought that my master knew that.” 

“ Briefly, people say so, yes or no?” 

“Yes, monsieur, I believe it at least.” 

I rose from table and went down on the promenade; 
Mercanson was there. I expected that he was going to 
shun me ; quite the contrary, he approached me. 

“Monsieur, ’ ’ he said to me, “ the other day you showed 
me signs of wrath that a man of character should not 
keep in his memory. I express to you my regret at 
being entrusted with an untimely commission” — he 
made a habit of using long words — “and to have 
clogged the wheels with ever so little importunity.” 

I paid him back his compliment, thinking that he 
would leave me thereupon ; but he began to walk along 
beside me. 

“Dalens! Dalens!” I repeated between my teeth, 
“who will speak to me of Dalens?” For Larive had 


220 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


said nothing to me but what a valet might say. Through 
whom did he know him ? through some servant-girl or 
some peasant. I must have a witness who could have 
seen Dalens at Madame Pierson’s and who would know 
on what to depend. This Dalens never left my head, 
and, not being able to speak of anything else, I spoke 
of it at once to Mercanson. 

Whether Mercanson was a wicked man, or was simple 
or tricky, I never clearly determined ; it is certain that 
he ought to hate me, and that he behaved towards me 
as wickedly as possible. Madame Pierson, who had 
the greatest friendship for the pastor, — and it was for 
good reason, — had, almost in spite of herself, extruded 
that sentiment to the nephew. He was proud of it, 
consequently was jealous. It is love alone that pro- 
duces jealousy; a favor, a kind word, a smile from a 
pretty mouth, may inspire it to madness in certain 
people. 

Mercanson seemed at first astonished, as well as 
Larive, at the questions that I put to him. I was still 
more astonished at them myself. But who knows one’s 
self here below ? 

At the priest’s first answers I saw that he understood 
what I wanted to know, and decided not to tell me. 

“ How does it happen, monsieur, that you who have 
known Madame Pierson for a long time past, and are 
received at her house in a rather intimate way, — I think 
so at least, — have not met Monsieur de Dalens there? 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


221 


But apparently you have some reason, which it is none 
of my business to know, to make inquiry about him to- 
day. What I can say of him for my part is that he was 
an honest gentleman, full of goodness and charity ; he 
was, like you, monsieur, very intimate at Madame Pier- 
son’s; he has a considerable pack of hounds and does 
the honors of his house splendidly. He played very 
good music, like you, monsieur, at Madame Pierson’s. 
As for his duties of charity, he performed them punctu- 
ally; when he was in the country, he, like you, mon- 
sieur, accompanied this lady on the promenade. His 
family enjoys an excellent reputation in Paris ; it hap- 
pened to me to find him at this lady’s house almost 
every time that I went there ; his morals pass as being 
excellent. Moreover, understand, monsieur, that I mean 
to speak in every respect only of a proper familiarity, 
such as suits persons of their worth. I think that he 
comes only for hunting: he was her husband’s friend; 
they say he is quite rich and very generous; but I 

scarcely know him, however, except by hearsay ” 

With how many tortuous phrases the heavy execu- 
tioner was killing me ! I looked at him, ashamed of 
listening to him, no longer daring to put a single ques- 
tion or to stop him in his gabble. He calumniated as 
sullenly and as long as he wanted : quite at his leisure, he 
drove his twisted blade into my heart ; when this was 
done, he left me without my being able to keep him ; 
and, taking all in all, he had told me nothing. 


222 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


I remained alone on the promenade ; night was be- 
ginning to fall. I know not whether I felt more of 
fury or of sadness. This confidence, that I had had 
of giving myself up blindly to my love for my dear 
Brigitte, had been so sweet and so natural to me that I 
could not determine on believing that so much happi- 
ness had deceived me. That unaffected and credulous 
feeling which had led me to her without my wishing to 
fight against it or ever to doubt it, had seemed to me of 
itself alone a proof that she was worthy of it. Was it 
possible, then, that these four most happy months were 
already only a dream ? 

“But, after all,” I said to myself of a sudden, “this 
woman has given herself rather quickly. Might there 
not have been some falsehood in that intention of flying 
from me which she at first had shown to me and which 
a word had dissipated? Might I not perchance have 
had to do with a woman who was one of a large class ? 
Yes, it is thus that they all go about it : they feign to 
recede in order to see themselves followed. Hinds 
themselves do as much : it is an instinct of the female. 
Was it not of her own impulse that she acknowledged 
her love to me, at the very moment when I believed 
that she would never be mine ? On the first day that I 
had seen her, did she not accept my arm, without know- 
ing me, with a levity that should have made me doubt 
her ? If this Dalens was her lover, it is probable that 
he is so still : there are those unions in the world that 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


223 


neither begin nor end ; when they see each other they 
resume, and as soon as they leave each other they forget. 
If that man returns on a vacation, she will no doubt see 
him again, and probably without breaking with me. 
What is that aunt, what that mysterious life that has 
charity for a label, what that settled liberty which cares 
for no talk ? Might they not be adventurers, those two 
women with their little house, their probity and their 
wisdom which impose on people so quickly and are still 
more quickly belied ? Assuredly, however this may be, I 
have fallen with my eyes shut into an affair of gallantry 
that I have taken for a romance ; but what is to be done 
now ? I see no one here but that priest who does not 
want to talk plainly, or his uncle, who will say still less 
about it. O my God ! who will save me? how know the 
truth?” 

Thus spoke jealousy ; thus, forgetting so many tears 
and all that I had suffered, I came, after two days, to 
disturb myself about what Brigitte had yielded to me. 
Thus, like all those who doubt, I already put aside feel- 
ings and thoughts to dispute with facts, to stick to the 
letter and to dissect what I loved. 

While burying myself in my reflections, by slow steps 
I reached Brigitte’s house. I found the gate open, and, 
as I was crossing the courtyard, I saw a light in the 
kitchen. I thought of questioning the servant. I turned, 
then, in that direction, and, jingling some silver pieces 
in my pocket, I stepped upon the threshold. 


224 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


An impression of horror stopped me short. That 
servant was a lean and wrinkled old woman, her back 
always bent, like people attached to the soil. I found 
her washing her plates and dishes over an unclean sink. 
A disgusting candle was flickering in her hand ; around 
her, saucepans, dishes, remains of the dinner that a 
prowling dog was visiting, who like me, had entered 
shyly; a warm and nauseating odor came from the 
humid walls. When the old woman perceived me, she 
looked at me, smiling with a confidential air : she had 
seen me in the morning slip out of her mistress’s room. 
I shuddered from disgust with myself and with what I 
had come in search of, in a place so well adapted to the 
ignoble action that I was meditating. I fled from that 
old woman as well as from my personified jealousy, and 
as if the odor of her plates and dishes had come out of 
my own heart. 

Brigitte was at the window, watering her dearly - 
beloved flowers ; a child of one of our neighbors, sitting 
in the bottom of the couch and buried in the cushions, 
was huddled up in one of its sleeves, and, its mouth 
full of bonbons, in its joyous and incomprehensible 
language, was making to her one of the long infant 
speeches, of those who do not yet know how to talk. I 
sat down beside her, and kissed the child’s fat cheeks, 
as if to restore a little innocence to my heart. Brigitte 
gave me a timid reception ; she saw her image already 
disturbed in my looks. On my part, I shunned her 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


225 


eyes; the more I admired her beauty and her air of 
candor, the more I said to myself that such a woman, 
if she was not an angel, was a monster of perfidy. I 
strove to recall each of Mercanson’s words, and, so to 
say, I confronted that man’s insinuations with my 
mistress’s traits and the charming contours of her 
countenance. “ She is very pretty,” I said to myself, 
“quite dangerous, if she knows how to deceive; but 
I will break her in and keep ahead of her ; and she 
will know who I am.” 

“My dear,” I said to her, after a long silence, “I 
have just given advice to a friend who has consulted me. 
He is a rather simple young man ; he has written to me 
that he has discovered that a woman who has just given 
herself to him, has another lover at the same time. He 
has asked me what he ought to do.’ 1 ' 

“ What answer have you given him? ” 

“ Two questions: Is she pretty ? and do you love her? 
If you love her, forget her; if she is pretty and you do not 
love her, keep her for your pleasure ; there will always 
be time to abandon her if you have to do only with her 
beauty, and she is worth about as much as any other. ’ ’ 

On hearing me speak thus, Brigitte left the child that 
she was holding; she had gone and sat down at the 
farther end of the room. We were without light; the 
moon, which lit up the place that Brigitte had just 
left, cast a deep shadow on the sofa where she was 
seated. The words that I had spoken bore so hard, so 


226 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


cruel a meaning, that I was myself distracted by them 
and my heart was filled with bitterness. The child, rest- 
less, called Brigitte, and became sad on looking at us. 
Its joyous cries, its little babbling, gradually ceased; 
it went to sleep on the couch. Thus all three of us 
remained silent, and a cloud passed over the moon. 

A servant entered, who came in search of the child ; 
a light was brought in. I rose, and Brigitte at the same 
time ; but she placed both her hands on her heart, and 
fell to the floor at the foot of her bed. 

I ran to her, frightened ; she had not lost conscious- 
ness and entreated me not to call any one. She told 
me that she was subject to violent palpitations that had 
tormented her since her youth and thus suddenly seized 
upon her, but that there was no danger, however, in 
these attacks, nor any remedy to be used. I was on my 
knees near her ; she sweetly opened her arms to me ; I 
took hold of her head and rested it on my shoulder. 
“Ah ! my friend,” she said, “I pity you.” 

“Listen to me,” I said in her ear, “I am a silly 
wretch, but I cannot keep anything on my heart. 
Who is that Monsieur Dalens who lives on the moun- 
tain and who sometimes comes to see you ? ’ ’ 

She seemed astonished at hearing me pronounce this 
name. “Dalens?” she said, “he is a friend of my 
husband. ’ ’ 

She looked at me as if to add: “What is the object of 
this question? ” It seemed to me that her countenance 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


227 


had become clouded again. I bit my lips. “If she wants 
to deceive me,” I thought, “I was wrong in speaking.” 

Brigitte rose with difficulty ; she took her fan and 
walked through the room with rapid strides. She was 
breathing violently ; I had wounded her. She remained 
pensive for some time, and we exchanged two or three 
looks that were almost cold and seemed hostile. She 
went to her secretary, which she opened, took from it 
a package of letters tied together with silk, and threw 
it in front of me without saying a word. 

But I looked neither at her nor at the letters ; I had 
just thrown a stone into an abyss, and I heard its echo 
resounding. For the first time, offended pride had 
appeared on Brigitte’s countenance. There was no 
longer in her eyes either restlessness or pity, and, as I 
had just felt myself quite different from what I had ever 
been, I had also just seen in her a woman who was 
unknown to me. 

“Read that,” she said at last. I advanced and 
reached out my hand to her. “ Read that ! read that!” 
she repeated, in an icy tone. 

I was holding the letters. I felt at that moment so 
persuaded of her innocence, and I found myself so un- 
just, that I was penetrated with repentance. “You 
remind me,” she said to me, “that I owe you the 
history of my life; be seated, and you will know it. 
You will then open these drawers, and you will read all 
that there is here written in my hand or by others.” 


228 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


She sat down and pointed to an arm-chair for me. I 
saw the effort that she was making to speak. She was 
as pale as death; her changed voice spoke with diffi- 
culty, and her throat was contracted. 

‘‘Brigitte! Brigitte !” I exclaimed, “In Heaven’s 
name, do not speak ! God is my witness that I was 
not born such as you believe me ; I have never in my 
life been either suspicious or distrustful. I have been 
ruined, my heart has been perverted. A deplorable 
experience has led me to a precipice, and, for a year 
past, I have had nothing but what there is of evil here 
below. God is my witness that, until this day, I did 
not believe myself capable of this ignoble role, the last 
of all, that of a jealous man. God is my witness that 
I love you, and that there is only you in this world who 
could cure me of the past. I have had to do until now 
only with women who deceived me or who were un- 
worthy of love. I have led the life of a libertine; I 
have, in my heart, memories that will never be effaced 
from it. Is it my fault if a calumny, if the most vague 
of accusations, the most untenable, meets to-day in this 
heart, with its fibres still suffering and ready to receive 
everything that resembles sorrow? Mention has been 
made to me this evening of a man whom I do not know, 
of whose existence I was ignorant ; they have given me 
to understand that there had been talk about you and 
him that proves nothing ; I do not want to ask you any- 
thing about him ; I have suffered on that account, I have 


) 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


229 


so acknowledged to you, and that is an irreparable wrong. 
But, rather than accept what you propose to me, I am 
going to throw all into the fire. Ah ! my friend, do 
not degrade me ; do not go so far as to justify yourself, 
do not punish me with suffering. How could I, at the 
bottom of my heart, suspect you of deceiving me ? No, 
you are beautiful and you are sincere ; a single one of 
your looks, Brigitte, tells me of it at greater length than 
I need to make me love you. If you knew what horrors, 
what monstrous perfidies the child before you has seen ! 
If you knew how people have treated him, how they 
have mocked him for all that was good in him, how 
they have taken care to teach him all that could lead 
him to doubt, to jealousy, to despair ! Alas ! alas ! my 
dear mistress, if you knew who loves you ! Do not 
reproach me in the least; be courageous enough to 
pity me ; I need to forget that other persons exist be- 
sides you. Who knows through what trials, through 
what frightful moments of sorrow, it will be neces- 
sary for me to pass ! I did not suspect that it might 
be thus, I did not believe that I should have to fight. 
Since you are mine, I see what I have done ; I have 
felt while embracing you how much my lips had been 
sullied. In Heaven’s name, help me to live ! God 
made me better than that.” 

Brigitte extended her arms to me, gave me the most 
tender caresses. She entreated me to tell her all that 
had given rise to that sad scene. I mentioned to her 


230 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


only what Larive had said to me, and dared not acknowl- 
edge to her that I had questioned Mercanson. She 
absolutely wanted me to listen to her explanations. 
Monsieur de Dalens had loved her ; but he was a 
frivolous man, quite dissipated and very inconstant ; 
she had given him to understand that, not wanting to 
marry again, she could only entreat him to change his 
language, and he had resigned with good grace ; but his 
visits, from that time, had been getting rarer, and now 
he came no more. She took from the bundle a letter 
that she showed me, and the date of which was recent ; 
I could not help blushing on finding in it the confirma- 
tion of what she had just said to me ; she assured me 
that she forgave me, and required of me, as the only 
chastisement, the promise that, thereafter, I would in- 
form her on the very spot of whatever might awaken 
in me any suspicion about her. Our treaty was sealed 
with a kiss, and, when I left, at daylight, we had both 
of us forgotten that Monsieur Dalens existed. 


A sort of stagnant inertia, tinged with a bitter joy, 
is common to debauchees. It is a consequence of a life 
of caprice, in which nothing is regulated according to 
the needs of the body, but according to the fancies of 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


231 


the mind, and in which the one ought always to be 
ready to obey the other. Youth and the will may 
resist excesses; but nature is avenged in silence, and 
the day on which she decides to repair her strength, the 
will is dying to await her and to abuse her afresh. 

Finding then around him all the objects that tempted 
him the evening before, the man who no longer has the 
strength to grasp them can give to what surrounds him 
only the smile of disgust. Add that these very objects, 
which keenly excite his desire, are never approached in 
cold blood ; all that the debauchee loves, he takes pos- 
session of with violence; his life is a fever; his organs, 
in order to seek enjoyment, are obliged to bring them- 
selves to the level of fermented liquors, courtesans, and 
sleepless nights ; in his days of weariness and sloth, he 
feels, then, a much greater distance than another man 
between his powerlessness and his temptations, and, to 
resist the latter, it is necessary that pride come to his 
aid and make him believe that he disdains them. It is 
thus that he incessantly spits on all the feasts of his 
life, and, that between a parching thirst and a profound 
satiety, tranquil vanity leads him to death. 

Though I was no longer a debauchee, it suddenly 
occurred to me that my body recalled that I had been 
so. It is quite plain that until then I had not noticed 
it. In the face of the sorrow that I had felt at my 
father’s death, everything had at first caused silence. 
A violent love had come ; as long as I was in solitude, 


2 3 2 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


weariness had not to struggle. Sad or gay, accord- 
ing to the moment, what matters it to him who is 
alone ? 

As zinc, that half-metal, taken from the bluish vein in 
which it sleeps in calamine, emits from itself a ray ol 
sunshine as it approaches virgin copper, so Brigitte’s 
kisses gradually reawakened in my heart what I carried 
buried there. As soon as I found myself face to face 
with her, I perceived what I was. 

There were certain days when I felt, of a morning, 
such an odd disposition of mind that it is impossible to 
describe it. I awoke without reason like a man who the 
evening before has been guilty of an excess at table that 
exhausted him. All sensations from without caused me 
an unbearable fatigue, and all known and customary 
objects displeased me and wearied me; if I spoke, it was 
to turn into ridicule what others said or what I myself 
thought. Then, stretched on a sofa, and, as it were, 
incapable of motion, I failed of deliberate purpose to 
carry out all the promenade plans that we had agreed 
upon the evening before ; I imagined that I was seeking 
in my memory for the best of what, during my good 
moments, I had been able to say of my tenderest and 
most sincere feelings to my dear mistress, and I was 
satisfied only when my ironical pleasantries had spoiled 
and poisoned those memories of the happy days. 
‘‘Might you not leave me that?” Brigitte sadly asked 
of me. “If there are two such different men in you, 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


233 

might you not, when the bad arises, be satisfied with 
forgetting the good ? * ' 

The patience with which Brigitte met these aberra- 
tions only, however, excited my ill-omened gayety. 
Strange to say, the man who suffers, deigns to cause 
suffering in what he loves ! That one should have so 
little control over one’s self, is that not the worst of 
maladies ? What is there more cruel to a woman than 
to see a man who is leaving her arms turn, by an inex- 
cusable caprice, into derision that which, hallowed by 
happy nights, is most sacred and most mysterious ? She 
did not, however, fly from me ; she remained near me 
crouched on her carpet, whilst, in my ferocious humor, 
I was thus insulting love, and letting my madness grum- 
ble on a mouth moist with her kisses. 

On those days, contrary to my custom, I felt myself 
in the mood to speak of Paris and to represent my 
debauched life as the best thing in the world. “ You 
are only a devotee,” I laughingly said to Brigitte: 
“you do not know what it is. There is nothing like 
men without care and who make love without believing 
in it.” Was this not saying that I did not believe in it? 

“Well,” Brigitte answered me, “teach me to please 
you always. I am perhaps as pretty as the mistresses 
whom you regret ; if I have not the wit they had, to 
divert you after their fashion, I only ask to learn. Do 
as if you did not love me, and let me love you without 
saying anything about it. If I am a devotee at church, 


234 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


I am so likewise in love. What must be done for you 
to believe it?” 

Behold her before her mirror, dressing in the middle 
of the day as if for a ball or for a feast, affecting a 
coquetry which, however, she could not endure, seeking 
to assume the same tone as I, laughing and skipping 
through the room. “Am I to your taste?” she said. 
“ Which of your mistresses do you find that I resemble? 
Am I pretty enough to make you forget that one may 
still believe in love? Have I the air of a care-naught?” 
Then, in the midst of that factitious joy, I saw her as 
she turned her back to me, and an involuntary shudder 
made the dull flowers that she was placing there tremble 
on her hair. I then sprang to her feet. “Stop,” I 
said to her, “you too closely resemble what you want 
to imitate and what my lips are vile enough to dare 
to bring up before you. Remove those flowers, remove 
that dress. Let us wash that gayety with a sincere tear ; 
do not remind me that I am only the prodigal son ; I 
know the past only too well.” 

But this very repentance was cruel : it proved to her 
that the phantoms which I had in my heart were full of 
reality. In yielding to an impulse of horror, I did noth- 
ing but tell her clearly that her resignation and her de- 
sire to please me presented to me only an impure image. 

And it was true. I arrived at Brigitte’s in a transport 
of joy, swearing to forget in her arms my sorrows and 
my past life ; on both knees I protested my respect for 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


235 


her as far as the foot of her bed ; I entered there as if 
going into a sanctuary; I extended my arms to her while 
shedding tears ; then she made a certain gesture, she re- 
moved her dress in a certain manner, she said a certain 
word on approaching me ; and I remembered all of a 
sudden such a girl who, on removing her dress one even- 
ing and approaching my bed, had made that gesture, had 
spoken that word. 

Poor devoted soul ! what did you suffer, then, on 
seeing me grow pale before you, when my arms, ready 
to receive you, fell as if deprived of life on your sweet 
and fresh shoulder ! when the kiss closed on my lip, and 
when the full look of love, that pure ray of God’s light, 
trembled in my eyes as an arrow that the wind turns 
aside ! Ah ! Brigitte, what diamonds flashed from your 
pupils ! from what treasures of sublime charity you 
drew, with a patient hand, your sad love full of pity ! 

For a long time, good and bad days succeeded each 
other almost regularly; I showed myself alternately 
severe and mocking, tender and devoted, cold and 
proud, repentant and submissive. Desgenais’s figure, 
which was the first to appear to me as if to warn me of 
what I was going to do, was incessantly present to my 
thought. During my days of doubt and coldness, I con- 
versed, so to say, with him ; often, at the very moment 
when I had just offended Brigitte by some cruel ban- 
tering, I said to myself: “If he were in my place, he 
would exceed what I have done ! ’ ’ 


236 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


Sometimes, also, while putting on my hat to go to 
Brigitte’s house, I looked at myself in the glass and 
said: “What great harm is there in it? After all, I 
have a pretty mistress ; she has given herself to a liber- 
tine, let her take me such as I am. ’ ’ I arrived with a 
smile on my lips, I threw myself into an arm-chair in 
an indolent and deliberate way ; then I saw Brigitte 
approach with her large, soft, and restless eyes ; I took 
her small white hands in mine, and I lost myself in an 
infinite dream. 

How give a name to a nameless thing ? Was I good 
or was I wicked ? Was I distrustful or was I mad ? It is 
not necessary to reflect on that, it is necessary to go on ; 
that was settled. 

We had as a neighbor a young woman whose name 
was Madame Daniel ; she was not wanting in beauty, 
still less in coquetry ; she was poor and strove to pass 
as being rich; she came to see us after dinner and 
always played a high game against us, though her losses 
put her ill at ease ; she sang and had no voice. In the 
heart of that unknown village, where her evil destiny 
compelled her to bury herself, she felt herself a prey to 
an unheard-of thirst for pleasure. She spoke only of 
Paris, where she set foot two or three days in the year ; 
she pretended to follow the fashions ; my dear Brigitte 
helped her as best she could, while smiling at her from 
pity ; her husband was employed in the Land Registry 
office : he took her on feast-days to the chief town of 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


237 


the Department, and, rigged out in all her deckings, 
the little woman danced there to her heart’s content 
with the garrison, in the Prefecture salons. She returned 
from there with her eyes bright and her body fatigued ; 
she then came to us so as to have to tell of her prowess 
and of the petty griefs that she had caused. The rest 
of the time she was reading romances, having never seen 
anything of her own household, which, moreover, was 
not savory. 

Every time that I saw her I did not fail to make fun of 
her, finding nothing so ridiculous as that life she thought 
she was leading ; I interrupted her festive narratives to 
ask her to give news of her husband and of her father- 
in-law, whom she detested above everything, the one 
because he was her husband and the other because he 
was only a peasant ; finally, we were scarcely together 
before we were disputing on some subject. 

I took a notion, in my evil days, to pay court to 
that woman, merely to annoy Brigitte. “See,” I 
said, “how perfectly Madame Daniel understands life ! 
Being of such a playful disposition, could one desire a 
more charming mistress?” I then undertook to praise 
her : her insignificant tattle became a freedom full of 
delicacy, her exaggerated pretensions, a desire to please 
that was quite natural ; was it her fault if she was poor? 
at least she thought only of pleasure, and so confessed 
frankly ; she preached no sermons and did not listen to 
those of others. I went so far as to say to Brigitte that 


238 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


she ought to take her for a model, and that that was 
altogether the sort of woman that pleased me. 

Poor Madame Daniel suddenly noticed in Brigitte’s 
eyes some signs of melancholy. She was a strange crea- 
ture, as good and as sincere, when drawn away from 
her frippery, as she was foolish when she was intent 
upon it. On that occasion she did something quite 
like herself, that is, at the same time good and foolish. 
One fine day, on the promenade, as they were alone, 
she threw herself into Brigitte’s arms, told her that she 
noticed that I was beginning to pay attention to her and 
that I addressed to her some remarks of which the inten- 
tion was not doubtful ; but that she knew that I was the 
lover of another, and that, as for her, whatever might 
happen, she would die rather than destroy the happiness 
of a friend. Brigitte thanked her, and Madame Daniel, 
having set her conscience at rest, scrupled no more 
about distracting me as much as possible by her glances. 

In the evening, after she had left, Brigitte told me, in 
a harsh tone, what had taken place in the wood ; she 
entreated me to spare her similar affronts in future. 
“ Not,” she said, “that I pay any attention to them, or 
that I believe in these pleasantries ; but, if you have any 
love for me, it seems to me that it is useless to tell a 
third party that it is not felt by you every day.” 

“ Is it possible,” I replied laughing, “ that that is of 
any importance? You see clearly that I am joking and 
that it is to kill time.” 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


239 


“ Ah! my friend, my friend,” said Brigitte, “it is a 
misfortune to have to kill time. ’ ’ 

Some days afterwards I proposed to her to go our- 
selves to the Prefecture and to see Madame Daniel 
dancing ; she consented to it regretfully. While she was 
finishing her toilet, I was near the mantel-piece, and I 
was making her some reproach about her losing her 
former gayety. “ What ails you, then?” I asked her — 
I knew it as well as she did — “ why this morose air that 
no longer leaves you? In truth you make our life a 
rather mournful companionship. I knew you formerly 
more joyous, more free and more open ; it is scarcely 
flattering to me to see that I have been the cause of its 
changing. But you have the spirit of the cloisters ; you 
were born to live in a convent.” 

It was Sunday ; when we passed along the promenade, 
Brigitte ordered the carriage to be stopped to say good- 
evening to some good friends, fresh and fine country 
girls who were going to dance at Les Tilleuls. After 
she had left them, she looked out of the window for a 
long time ; her little ball cost her dear ; she raised her 
handkerchief to her eyes. 

At the Prefecture we found Madame Daniel in all her 
glory. I began by making her dance so often that it was 
remarked ; I paid her a thousand compliments, and she 
answered them as best she could. 

Brigitte was in front of us; her look never left us. 
What I experienced is difficult to tell : it was pleasure 


240 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


and pain ; clearly, she was jealous ; but, instead of being 
touched thereby, I did all that was necessary to disturb 
her more. 

I expected, on returning, reproaches on her part ; not 
only did she not make them, but she remained gloomy 
and mute the next day and the day following. When I 
arrived at her house, she came to me and embraced me ; 
after which, we sat down facing each other, both pre- 
occupied and scarcely exchanging a few insignificant 
words. The third day she spoke, broke out into bitter 
reproaches, told me that my conduct was inexplicable, 
that she knew not what to think of it, except that I no 
longer loved her ; but that she could not bear this life, 
and that she was resolved on anything rather than endure 
my oddities and my coldness. She had her eyes filled 
with tears, and I was ready to ask her pardon, when there 
suddenly escaped from her a few words so bitter that my 
pride revolted. I replied to her in the same tone, and 
our quarrel assumed a violent character. I told her that 
it was ridiculous that I could not inspire my mistress 
with confidence sufficient for her to trust in me as to my 
most ordinary actions ; that Madame Daniel was only a 
pretext ; that she knew very well that I did not think 
seriously of that woman ; that her pretended jealousy was 
only a very real despotism, and that, moreover, if this 
life fatigued her, it depended only on her to break it off. 

“Be it so,” she replied. “The more so, as, since I 
have been yours, I no longer recognize you ; you have no 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


241 


doubt played a comedy to persuade me that you loved 
me ; it tires you, and you have only insult to give me 
back. You suspect me of deceiving you at the first 
word that one says to you, and I have no business to 
endure an insult that you heap on me. You are no 
longer the man whom I have loved. * ’ 

“I know,” I said to her, “what your sufferings are. 
On what does it depend that they are not renewed at 
every step that I may take? Ere long I shall not 
have permission to address a word to any one but you. 
You feign to be maltreated so as to be able to give 
insult yourself ; you accuse me of tyranny so that I may 
become a slave. Since I disturb your rest, live in 
peace ; you will not see me again.” 

We parted in wrath, and I spent a day without seeing 
her. On the following evening, toward midnight, I 
felt in me a sadness that I could not resist. I shed 
a torrent of tears; I overwhelmed myself with insults 
which I well merited. I said to myself that I was only 
a madman, and only a wicked sort of madman, to make 
the noblest, the best of creatures suffer. I ran to her 
house to throw myself at her feet. 

On entering the garden I saw her room lit up, and a 
doubtful thought passed through my mind. “ She is 
not expecting me at this hour,” I said to myself; “who 
knows what she is doing ? I left her in tears yesterday ; 
I am going, perhaps, to find her again getting ready to 
sing and not caring any more for me than if I did not 


242 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


exist. She is, perhaps, at her toilet, like the other. I 
must enter gently and know what to expect.” 

I advanced on tiptoe, and, the door being by chance 
open, I could see Brigitte without being seen. 

She was seated in front of her table and was writing 
in that same book which had caused my first doubts on 
her account. In her left hand she held a small white 
wooden box which she looked at from time to time with 
a sort of nervous trembling. I do not know what there 
was of a sinister effect in the appearance of tranquillity 
that reigned in the room. Her secretary was open, and 
several bundles of paper were arranged there as if they 
had just been put in order. 

I made some noise in pushing the door. She rose, 
went to the secretary, which she closed, and then came 
to me with a smile: “Octave,” she said to me, “we 
are two children, my dear. Our quarrel is quite sense- 
less, and, if you had not returned this evening, I 
would have been at your house to-night. Pardon me, it 
is I who am w'rong. Madame Daniel is coming to 
dinner to-morrow; make me repent, if you wish, for 
what you call my despotism. Provided that you love 
me, I am happy ; let us forget what has passed and let 
us not spoil our happiness. ’ * 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


243 


III 

Our quarrel had been, so to say, less sad than our 
reconciliation; it was accompanied, on Brigitte’s part, 
with a mystery that frightened me at first, and after- 
wards left a continual restlessness in my soul. 

The more I went, the more were developed in me, 
despite all my efforts, the two elements of misfortune 
that the past had bequeathed to me : sometimes a furious 
jealousy full of reproach and insult ; sometimes a cruel 
gayety, an affected levity that outraged, while bantering 
what I held most dear. Thus inexorable memories 
pursued me unrelentingly ; thus Brigitte, seeing herself 
treated alternately either as a faithless mistress or as a 
kept girl, fell gradually into a sadness that devastated 
our whole life ; and worst of all is that this very sadness, 
though I felt the reason for it and though I felt myself 
guilty, was none the less chargeable to me. I was 
young and I loved pleasure; that every-day familiarity 
with a woman older than myself, who was suffering and 
languishing, that countenance ever more and more seri- 
ous which I had always before me, all that was revolting 
to my youth and inspired me with bitter regrets for my 
old-time liberty. 

When, on a beautiful moonlight night, we were slowly 
traversing the forest, we both of us felt ourselves seized 


244 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


with a deep melancholy. Brigitte was looking at me 
pitifully. We went and sat down on a rock that over- 
looked a desert gorge ; we spent whole hours there ; her 
half-veiled eyes plunged through mine into my heart, 
then she turned them to nature, to the heavens, to the 
valley. “Ah! my dear child,” she said, “how I pity 
you ! you do not love me. ’ ’ 

To reach that rock it was necessary to go two leagues 
through the woods ; the same to return, and that made 
four. Brigitte was not afraid either of fatigue or of the 
night. We set out at eleven o’clock in the evening to 
return only some time in the morning. When we took 
those long journeys, she wore a blue blouse and men’s 
garments, saying gayly that her customary costume was 
not made for brushwood. She walked in front of me in 
the sand, with a determined step and with so charming 
a mingling of feminine delicacy and childish temerity 
that I stopped to look at her every moment. It seemed, 
once she had started, that she had to perform a difficult 
task, but a sacred one; she went ahead like a soldier, 
swinging her arms and singing at the top of her voice ; 
all of a sudden she turned round, came to me and 
embraced me. It was to go on ; returning, she leaned 
on my arm : then, more singing ; there were con- 
fidences, tender chats in a low voice, though we were 
the only beings for more than two leagues around. I 
do not remember a single word exchanged during the 
return that was not of love or of friendship. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


245 


One evening, in order to reach the rock, we had 
taken a road of our own invention, that is, we had cut 
across the woods without following a road. Brigitte 
went there with such a good heart, and her little velvet 
cap on her luxuriant blond hair so distinctly gave her 
the air of a sturdy urchin that I forgot that she was a 
woman, when there was some step hard to cross. More 
than once she had been obliged to call me back so as to 
aid her to climb the rocks, w r hilst, without thinking of 
her, I had already mounted higher. I cannot describe 
the effect then produced, on that clear and magnificent 
night, in the midst of the forest, by that half-joyous, 
half-plaintive woman’s voice, emerging from that small 
scholar’s body hanging on to furze bushes and tree- 
trunks, and no longer able to advance. I took her in 
my arms. “ Come, madame,” I said to her, laughing, 
“you are a pretty little brave and alert mountaineer; 
but you are peeling the skin off your white hands, and, 
in spite of your thick iron-tipped shoes, your stick and 
your martial air, I see that it is necessary to carry you.” 

We arrived all out of breath ; I had a strap around 
my body and I carried something to drink in a wicker- 
covered bottle. When we were on the rock, my dear 
Brigitte asked me for my bottle ; I had lost it, as well as, 
a tinder-box that served us for another purpose : it was 
to read the names of the roads written on the posts 
when we had gone astray, which was happening con- 
tinually. I then clambered to the posts, when it was 


246 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


necessary to kindle the tinder sufficiently for the purpose 
of catching in transit the half-effaced letters; all that 
madly, like the two children that we were. It was 
necessary to us, when at a cross-roads we had to decipher 
not one, but five or six posts, in order to discover the 
right one. But that evening our entire baggage had 
remained on the grass. “Well,” said Brigitte to me, 
“we will spend the night here; and, indeed, I am 
tired. This rock is a rather hard bed; we will make 
one with dry leaves. Let us sit down and talk no more 
of it.” 

The evening was superb : the moon was rising behind 
us ; I saw it still to my left. Brigitte watched it for a 
long time emerging from the black tracery that the 
wooded hills outlined on the horizon. In proportion 
as the light of the orb emerged from behind the thick 
copse and was spreading in the heavens, Brigitte’s song 
became slower and more melancholy. She soon bent 
down, and, throwing her arms around my neck: “Do 
not believe,” she said, “that I do not understand your 
heart and that I make reproaches to you for what you 
make me suffer. It is not your fault, my love, if you 
are lacking in strength to forget your past life; it is 
in good faith that you have loved me, and I will never 
regret, even should I have to die of your love, the day 
on which I gave myself. You believed that you were 
born again to life and that you would forget in my arms 
the memory of the women who ruined you. Alas ! 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


247 


Octave, I formerly smiled at that precocious experience 
which you said you had acquired and of which I heard 
you boast, like children who know nothing. I believed 
that I had only to wish, and that all that was good in 
your heart would come to your lips at my first kiss. 
You believed so yourself, and both of us have been 
mistaken. O child ! you carry in your heart a wound 
that will not be healed ; that woman who deceived you, 
you must indeed have loved dearly ! yes, more than me, 
much more, alas ! since with all my poor love I cannot 
efface her image ; it must also be that she cruelly de- 
ceived you, since it is in vain that I am faithful to you ! 
and the others, those wretches ! what have they done to 
poison your youth ? The pleasures that they sold to you 
were, then, very keen and very terrible, since you ask 
me to resemble them ! You remember them beside me ! 
Ah ! my child, that is the most cruel. I prefer to see you 
unjust and cruel, to reproach me with imaginary crimes 
and to be avenged on me for the evil done to you by 
your first mistress, than to find on your countenance that 
frightful gayety, that mocking libertine air that suddenly 
comes to place itself like a plaster mask between your 
lips and mine. Tell me, Octave, why is that? why 
these days when you speak to me of love with contempt 
and when you so sadly mock even our sweetest ebulli- 
tions? What control over your irritable nerves, then, 
had been gained by that frightful life which you have 
led, for such insults still to float on your lips in spite of 


248 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


you ? Yes, in spite of you, for your heart is noble, you, 
yourself, blush at what you are doing ; you love me too 
much not to suffer from it, because you see that I am 
suffering from it. Ah ! now I know you. The first time 
that I saw you thus, I was seized with a terror of which 
nothing can give you an idea. I believed that you were 
only a rake, that you had designedly deceived me by 
the pretence of a love that you did not feel, and that 
I saw you such as you really were. O my friend ! I 
thought of death; what a night I spent! You do not 
know my life ; you do not know that I, who am speak- 
ing to you, have not had a sweeter experience of the 
world than you. Alas ! life is sweet, that is, to those 
who do not know it. 

“You, my dear Octave, are not the first man whom I 
have loved. At the bottom of my heart there is a fatal 
history, which I desire that you should know. My 
father had intended me, while yet young, for the only 
son of an old friend. They were country neighbors 
and owned two small estates of almost equal value. The 
two families saw each other nearly every day and, so to 
say, lived together. My father died ; a long time had 
elapsed since we had lost our mother. I lived under the 
guardianship of my aunt, whom you know. A journey 
that she was compelled to take some time afterwards 
obliged her to entrust me in her turn to my future 
father-in-law. He never called me anything but his 
daughter, and it was so well known in the country that 


^art jfourtf) (Chapter fiM 


“ Well said Brigitte to me , “ we will spend the night 
here ; and , indeed , / tired. This rock is a rather 
hard bed ; we will make one with dry leaves 


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CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


249 


I was to marry his son that both of us were left together 
in the greatest liberty. 

“This young man, whose name it is useless to tell 
you, had always appeared to love me. What for years 
had been a childhood’s friendship became love in time. 
He began, when we were alone, to speak to me of the 
happiness that awaited us ; he pictured his impatience to 
me. I was younger than he by only a year ; but he had 
made in the neighborhood the acquaintance of a man of 
bad life, a sort of adventurer to whose advice he had 
listened. Whilst I was giving myself up to his caresses 
with the confidence of a child, he resolved to deceive 
his father, to break his word with all of us and to 
abandon me after having ruined me. 

“ His father had made us come to his room one 
morning, and there, in the presence of the whole 
family, had announced to us that the day was fixed for 
our marriage. That very evening he met me in the 
garden, spoke to me of his love more forcibly than ever, 
told me that, since the date was fixed upon, he regarded 
himself as my husband, and that before God he was so 
since his birth. I had no other excuse to allege than 
my youth, my ignorance, and the confidence that I had. 
I gave myself to him before being his wife, and eight 
days afterwards he left his father’s house; he fled with 
a woman with whom his new friend had made him 
acquainted; he wrote to us that he was leaving for 
Germany, and we have never seen him since. 


250 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


“ That, in a word, is the history of my life ; my hus- 
band knew it as you know it now. I have a great deal 
of pride, my child, and I had sworn in my solitude that 
never would a man make me suffer a second time what I 
suffered then. I have seen you and I have forgotten my 
oath, but not my sorrow. I must be treated gently ; if 
you are ill, I am so likewise ; we must be careful of each 
other. You see, Octave, that I also know what the 
memory of the past is. It inspires me also when near 
you with moments of cruel terror; I shall have more 
courage than you, for perhaps I have suffered more. It 
will be for me to begin ; my heart is quite far from sure 
of itself, I am still very weak ; my life in this village 
was so peaceful before you came here ! I had so often 
promised myself not to change anything in it ! All 
that makes me exacting. Well, no matter, I am yours. 
You have told me, in your good moments, that Provi- 
dence has charged me to watch over you like a mother. 
It is the truth, my love; I am not your mistress every 
day ; there are many days when I am, when I want to 
be, your mother. Yes, when you make me suffer, I no 
longer see my lover in you ; you are then only a sick 
child, distrustful or mutinous, whom I want to care for 
or cure in order again to find him whom I love and 
whom I want to love always. May God give me this 
strength!” she added, as she looked towards heaven. 
“ May God who sees us, who hears me, may the God 
of mothers and lovers let me accomplish this task! 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


25 1 


Even should I succumb, even should my pride that 
revolts, my poor heart that is breaking, in spite of me, 

even should my whole life ’ ’ 

She did not finish ; her tears stopped her. O God ! I 
saw her there on her knees, her hands clasped, resting on 
the rock ; the wind made her sway in front of me like the 
heather that surrounds us. Frail and sublime creature ! 
she was praying for her love. I raised her up in my arms. 
“ O my sole friend ! ” I exclaimed, “ O my mistress, my 
mother and my sister ! ask also for me that I may love 
you as you deserve. Ask that I may live ; that my heart 
may be washed in your tears; that it may become a stain- 
less sacrifice, and that we may share it before God ! ’ ’ 
We threw ourselves on the rock. All was silence 
around us ; above our heads spread the sky resplendent 
with stars. “ Do you recognize it? ” I said to Brigitte ; 
‘ ‘ do you remember the first day ? ’ ’ 

Thank God, since that evening we have never re- 
turned to that rock. It is an altar that has remained 
pure ; it is one of the only spectres of my life that is 
still clad in white when it passes before my eyes. 


IV 

As I was crossing the square, I saw two men stop 
one evening, and one of them said rather loudly: “It 
appears that he has maltreated her.” “It is her fault,” 


252 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


the other replied ; ‘ ‘ why choose such a man ? He has 
to do only with fast girls ; she is enduring the penalty 
of her folly.” 

I advanced in the darkness to recognize those who 
were speaking thus and to try to hear more from them ; 
but they went away on seeing me. 

I found Brigitte restless ; her aunt was seriously ill ; 
she had only time to say a few words to me. I could 
not see her for a whole week; I knew that she had 
brought a physician from Paris ; at last, one day she 
sent for me. 

“My aunt is dead,” she said to me; “I lose the only 
being that remained to me on earth. I am now alone 
in the world, and I am going to leave the country. ’ ’ 

“Am I, then, really nothing to you?” 

“Yes, my friend; you know that I love you, and I 
often think that you love me. But how could I count 
on you? I am your mistress, alas ! without your being 
my lover. It is for you that Shakespeare uses this sad 
expression : 4 Get thee a changeable taffeta doublet made, 
for your mind is like the thousand-hued opal.’ And as 
for me, Octave, ’ ’ she added, as she pointed to her mourn- 
ing dress, “I am devoted to a single color, and for a 
long time I will not change it again. ’ ’ 

“ Leave the country if you will ; either I will kill my- 
self, or I will follow you. Ah ! Brigitte,” I continued, as 
I threw myself on my knees before her, “you thought 
that you were alone when you saw your aunt die ! 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


253 


That is the most cruel punishment that you could inflict 
on me ; never have I felt more painfully the wretched- 
ness of my love for you. You must retract that horrible 
thought ; I merit it, but it is killing me. O God ! can 
it be true that I count as nothing in your life, or that I 
am something in it only by the evil that I am doing 
you ! ’ ’ 

“I do not know,” she said, “who is concerned 
about us; there have been strange remarks spread 
abroad for some time past, in this village and in the 
neighborhood. Some say that I am ruining myself; 
they accuse me of imprudence and folly ; others repre- 
sent you as a cruel and dangerous man. They have pene- 
trated, I know not how, even into our most secret 
thoughts ; what I imagined I alone knew, those inequal- 
ities in your conduct and the sad scenes to which they 
have given rise, all that is known; my poor aunt has 
spoken to me of it, and long ago she knew of it with- 
out saying anything about it. Who knows but all that 
made her sink more rapidly, more cruelly, into the 
grave ? When I meet my former friends on the prome- 
nade, they approach me coldly or shun me on my ap- 
proach; my dear peasant women themselves, those 
good girls who loved me so much, shrug their shoulders 
on Sunday when they see my place empty under the 
orchestra at their little ball. Why, how does that 
happen ? I do not know, nor you either, no doubt ; 
but I must leave, I cannot bear that. And this death, 


254 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


this sudden and frightful malady, above all, this soli- 
tude ! this empty room ! Courage fails me ; my love, 
my love, do not abandon me!” 

She wept ; in the neighboring room I noticed wear- 
ing apparel in disorder, a trunk on the floor, and all 
that betold of preparations for leaving. It was clear 
that at the moment of her aunt’s death, Brigitte had 
wanted to leave without me, and that she had not the 
strength for it. She was indeed so broken down that 
she spoke only with difficulty ; her situation was horri- 
ble, and it was I who made it so. Not only was she 
unhappy, but she was insulted in public, and the man 
in whom she should have found at the same time a 
support and a consoler, was to her only a still more 
fruitful source of restlessness and torture. 

I so keenly felt my wrong-doings that I was ashamed 
of myself. After so many promises, so much useless 
exaltation, so many plans and so many hopes, this, 
then, was what I had come to, and in the space of 
three months ! I thought I had a treasure in my heart, 
and there had come out of it only a bitter spleen, the 
shadow of a dream, and the misfortune of a woman 
whom I adored. For the first time I found myself 
really face to face with myself; Brigitte uttered no 
reproach ; she wanted to leave and could not do so ; 
she was ready to suffer further. I asked myself all of a 
sudden if I ought not to leave her, if it was not my 
duty to fly from her and to deliver her from a scourge. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


255 


I arose, and, passing into the next room, I went and 
sat down on Brigitte’s trunk. There, I supported my 
brow on my hands and remained as if annihilated. I 
looked around me at all those half-completed packages, 
the clothing spread out on the furniture ; alas ! I knew 
them all; there was a little of my heart after all that 
had touched her. I began to calculate all the evil that 
I had caused ; I again saw my dear Brigitte pass under 
the linden alley, her white goat running after her. 

“ Oh, man ! ” I exclaimed to myself, “and by what 
right? What makes you so bold as to come here and 
put your hand on this woman? Who has given per- 
mission for another to suffer on your account? You 
comb yourself before your mirror, and go your way, 
foppish, in good luck, to the home of your distracted 
mistress ; you throw yourself on the cushions where 
she has just prayed for you and for her, and you tap 
gently, with an easy air, on those slender hands that 
are still trembling. You understand how to excite a 
poor creature, and you perorate rather warmly in your 
amorous madness, almost like lawyers who come red- 
eyed out of a petty suit that they have lost. You play 
the little prodigal son, you bandy words with suffering ; 
you find leisure to commit a boudoir murder with pin- 
stabs. What will you say to the living God when your 
work shall be finished ? Whither goes the woman who 
loves you ? Whither do you glide, where do you fall, 
whilst she is leaning on you? With what countenance 


256 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


will you one day bury your pale and wretched lover, 
as she has just buried the last being who protected 
her? Yes, yes, without a doubt you will bury her, for 
your love is killing her and is consuming her ; you have 
vowed her to your Furies, and it is she who is appeasing 
them. If you follow this woman, she will die through 
you. Take care ! her good angel hesitates ; he has 
come to strike that blow in that house in order to drive 
a fatal and shameful passion from it ! he has inspired 
Brigitte with that thought of her leaving ; he is perhaps 
whispering in her ear at this moment his last warning. 
O assassin ! O executioner ! take care ! it is a question 
of life and of death ! * ’ 

Thus did I speak to myself ; then I saw on a corner of 
the sofa a little striped gingham dress, already folded to 
be put into the trunk. It had been the witness of one of 
the few of our happy days. I touched it and raised it up. 

“I to leave you!” I said to it; “I to lose you! 
O cherished gown ! you want to leave without me ? 

“No, I cannot abandon Brigitte; at this moment it 
would be an act of cowardice. She has just lost her 
aunt, look at her alone : she is the object of the remarks 
of some unknown enemy. It can be only Mercanson ; 
he no doubt has told of his conversation with me about 
Dalens, and, seeing me jealous one day, he has con- 
cluded from that and guessed at the rest. Assuredly, 
he is a snake that comes to befoul my dearly-beloved 
flower. In the first place, I must punish him for it, then 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


257 


I must repair the evil that I have done to Brigitte. 
What a madman I am ! I think of leaving her when it 
is necessary to devote my life to her, to expiate my 
wrong-doings, to give back to her, in happiness, in 
attentions and in love, what tears I have caused to flow 
from her eyes ! when I am her only support in the 
world, her only friend, her only sword ! when I ought 
to follow her to the end of the world, to shelter her 
with my body, to console her for having loved me and 
for having given herself to me ! ” 

“Brigitte!” I exclaimed as I entered the room in 
which she had remained, “wait for me an hour, and I 
will return.” 

“ Where are you going? ” she asked. 

“Wait for me,” I said to her, “do not leave without 
me. Remember the words of Ruth : * Whither thou 
goest, I will go; thy people shall be my people, and 
thy God my God : Where thou diest, will I die, and 
there will I be buried.’ ” 

I left her hurriedly and I ran to Mercanson’s; I was 
told that he had gone out, and I entered his house to 
wait for him. 

I had sat down in a corner, on the priest’s leather 
chair, in front of his black and dirty table. I was 
beginning to find the time long, when I came to recall 
my duel about my first mistress. 

“I received there,” I said to myself, “a good pistol 
shot, and I have remained a ridiculous madman from it. 


258 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


What have I come to do here? This priest will not 
fight; if I go and pick a quarrel with him, he will 
answer me that the form of his dress excuses him from 
listening to me, and he will prate about it a little more 
when I shall have left. What, moreover, is that talking 
which people are doing? about what is Brigitte dis- 
turbed? It is said that she is ruining her reputation, 
that I maltreat her and that she is wrong to endure it. 
What folly ! that concerns no one ; there is nothing 
better than to let them talk ; in such a case, to be con- 
cerned about these annoyances is to attach importance 
to them. Can one prevent provincial folk from being 
concerned about their neighbors? Can one prevent 
prudes from speaking ill of a woman who takes a lover ? 
What means could one find for putting a stop to a public 
rumor? If people say that I maltreat her, it is for me 
to prove the contrary by my conduct toward her, and 
not by violence. It would be as ridiculous to seek a 
quarrel with Mercanson, as to leave a country because 
people chatter there. No, it is unnecessary to leave the 
country; it is impolitic; it would be telling everybody 
that people were right and playing into the hands of the 
babblers. It is not the right thing either to leave or to 
be concerned with talk.” 

I returned to Brigitte’s. A half-hour had scarcely 
passed, and I had three times changed my mind. I dis- 
suaded her from her plan ; I told her what I had just 
done and why I had refrained. She listened to me 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


259 


resignedly ; yet she wanted to leave ; that house in which 
her aunt had died was odious to her ; much effort was 
needed on my part to make her consent to remain; I 
at last succeeded. We repeated to each other that we 
despised the world’s talk, that it was not necessary to 
yield to them in anything nor to make any change in 
our habits of life. I swore to her that my love would 
console her for all her sorrows, and she feigned to hope 
so. I told her that this circumstance had so enlightened 
me on all my wrong-doings that my conduct would 
prove my repentance to her, that I wanted to drive 
away from me as a phantom all the bad leaven that re- 
mained in my heart, that she would henceforward have 
to suffer neither from my pride nor from my caprices ; 
and thus, sad and patient, ever hanging on my neck, 
she obeyed a mere caprice that I myself took for a flash 
of my reason. 


v 


One day, on returning to her home, I saw a little 
room open that she called her oratory ; the only furni- 
ture in it indeed was a kneeling-chair and a small altar, 
with a cross and some flower-vases. Moreover, the walls 
and the curtains, everything was as white as snow. She 
shut herself up there sometimes, but rarely, since I had 
been living with her. 


260 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


I leaned against the door, and I saw Brigitte seated 
on the floor in the midst of flowers that she had just 
thrown down. She was holding a small wreath that 
appeared to me to be of dry grass, and was breaking it 
between her hands. 

“What are you doing there?” I asked her. She 
started and arose. “It is nothing,” she said, “child’s 
play ; it is an old wreath of roses that has faded in this 
oratory ; it is a long time since I put it there ; I have 
come to change my flowers. ’ ’ 

She spoke in a trembling voice and seemed ready to 
faint. I remembered that name of Brigitte la Rose 
which I had heard given to her. I asked her if by 
chance it was not her rose wreath that she had just 
broken thus. 

“ No,” she replied, as she grew pale. 

“Yes,” I exclaimed, “yes; on my life ! give me the 
pieces ! ’ ’ 

I picked them up and laid them on the altar, then I 
remained mute, my eyes fixed on those ruins. 

“Should I not be right,” she said, “if it was my 
wreath, to have removed it from that wall on which it 
was for so long a time? What are these ruins good for? 
Brigitte la Rose is no longer of this world, any more 
than the roses that baptized her. ’ ’ 

She left ; I heard a sob, and the door was closed on 
me; I fell on my knees on the stone and I wept 
bitterly. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


261 


When I went back to her, I found her seated at table ; 
dinner was ready, and she was waiting for me. I took 
my place in silence, and there was no question of what 
we had in our hearts. 


VI 


It was indeed Mercanson who in the village and in 
the neighboring chateaus had told of my conversation 
with him about Dalens, and the suspicions which, in 
spite of myself, I had let him clearly see into. You 
know how, in the provinces, slanderous talk is repeated, 
it flies from mouth to mouth, and is exaggerated ; that 
was what then happened. 

Brigitte and I found ourselves sitting face to face with 
each other in a new position. Whatever weakness she 
had shown in her attempt at leaving, she had done it 
none the less. It was at my entreaty that she had re- 
mained ; there was an obligation in that. I had pledged 
myself not to disturb her rest either by my jealousy or 
by my levity ; every harsh or teasing word that escaped 
me was a fault, every sad look that she gave me was a 
reproach felt and merited. 

Her good and simple naturalness made her at first 
find in her solitude an additional charm ; she could see 
me at any hour and without being obliged to take any 


262 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


precaution. Perhaps she gave herself up to this facility- 
in order to prove to me that she preferred her love to her 
reputation ; it seemed that she repented of having shown 
herself sensitive to the remarks of backbiters. How- 
ever this may be, instead of being watchful of ourselves 
and defending ourselves from curiosity, we, on the con- 
trary, assumed a sort of freer and more careless life than 
ever. 

I went to her house at the breakfast hour; having 
nothing to do during the day, I went out only with her. 
She kept me for dinner, the evening slipped away ; ere 
long, when the hour for returning had arrived, we 
imagined a thousand pretexts, we took a thousand 
illusory precautions, which, at bottom, were not such. 
At last I lived, so to say, at her house, and we made a 
semblance of believing that no one noticed it. 

I kept my word for some time, and not a cloud dis- 
turbed our familiar chats. Those were happy days ; it 
is not of them that it is necessary to speak. 

It was said everywhere in the country, that Brigitte 
was living publicly with a libertine who had come from 
Paris ; that her lover maltreated her, that their time was 
spent in leaving each other and in coming together 
again, but that all that would end badly. As much as 
they had bestowed praise on Brigitte for her past con- 
duct, so much did they blame her now. There was 
nothing in that very conduct, formerly worthy of all 
praise, that they did not go and look up in order to give 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 263 

it a bad interpretation. Her lonely journeyings in the 
mountains, the object of which was charity and which 
had never aroused suspicion, became all of a sudden the 
subject of by-talk and jibes. They spoke of her as of a 
woman who had lost all human respect and who must 
justly draw upon herself inevitable and frightful mis- 
fortunes. 

I had told Brigitte that my opinion was to let them 
tattle, and I did not want to appear as noticing those 
remarks ; but the truth is that they became unbearable 
to me. I went out sometimes expressly, and I went to 
pay visits in the neighborhood in order to try and hear 
a positive expression that I could have regarded as an 
insult, so as to demand satisfaction therefor. I listened 
attentively to all that was said in a low voice in a salon 
in which I found myself, but I could catch nothing ; so 
as to tear me to pieces at their ease, they waited for me 
to leave. I then returned home and I told Brigitte that 
all those stories were only trifles, that one must be silly 
to take any notice of them ; that people might talk of 
us as much as they pleased, and that I did not want to 
know anything of them. 

Was I not guilty beyond all expression ? If Brigitte 
was imprudent, was it not my part to reflect and to 
warn her of the danger ? Quite the contrary, I, so to 
say, took sides with the world against her. 

I had begun by showing myself careless ; I soon came 
to showing myself wicked. “ Truly,” I said to Brigitte, 


264 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


“people talk ill of your nocturnal excursions. Are you 
quite sure that they are wrong ? Has nothing happened 
in the alleys and in the grottoes of that romantic forest ? 
Have you never accepted, while returning at dusk, an 
unknown man’s arm, as you accepted mine? Was it 
indeed charity alone that served you as a divinity in 
that beautiful temple of verdure which you traversed so 
courageously ? ’ ’ 

Brigitte’s first look, when I began to assume this tone, 
will never leave my memory ; I myself shuddered at it. 
“But, bah! ” I thought, “she would do like my first 
mistress, if I gave her occasion and cause for it; she 
would point her finger at me as a ridiculous fool, and I 
should pay for it all in the eyes of the public.” 

From the man who doubts, to him who denies, there 
is hardly any distance. Every philosopher is cousin to 
an atheist. After having told Brigitte that I had doubts 
of her past conduct, I really doubted it ; and, as soon 
as I doubted it, I did not believe in it. 

I came to represent to myself that Brigitte was deceiv- 
ing me, she whom I did not leave for an hour in the 
day ; sometimes I designedly remained absent for rather 
long intervals, and I satisfied myself that it was to try 
her ; but, in reality, it was only to give me, as if without 
my knowing it, a reason for doubting and bantering. 
Then I was satisfied when I remarked to her that, far 
from being more jealous, I no longer cared for those silly 
fears that formerly passed through my mind ; be it well 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 265 

understood that that meant that I did not esteem her 
enough to be jealous. 

I had at first kept to myself the reflections that I made ; 
I soon found pleasure in making them openly in Brigitte’s 
presence. Did we go out for a walk : “ That dress is 
pretty,” I said to her; “ such a girl among my friends 
has one like it, I believe.” Were we at table : “ Come, 
my dear, my former mistress sang her song at dessert ; it 
is right that you imitate her.” Did she sit down at the 
piano: “Ah! as a favor, play me the waltz, then, that 
was the rage last winter ; that recalls the happy time. ’ ’ 

Reader, that lasted six months : for six entire months, 
Brigitte, calumniated, exposed to the insults of the 
world, had to endure on my part all the disdain and all 
the insults that a wrathful and cruel libertine could lavish 
on the girl that he was paying. 

On leaving those frightful scenes in which my mind 
was being exhausted in tortures and was rending my 
own heart, in turn accusing and bantering, but always 
greedy to suffer and to return to the past ; on leaving 
there, a strange love, an exaltation driven to excess, 
made me treat my mistress as an idol, as a divinity. A 
quarter of an hour after having insulted her, I was on 
my knees ; as soon as I was no longer accusing, I was 
asking pardon ; as soon as I was no longer bantering, I 
was weeping. Then an unheard-of delirium, a fever of 
happiness, took possession of me; I showed myself over- 
come with joy, I almost lost my reason by the violence 


266 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


of my transports ; I knew not what to say, what to do, 
what to imagine, so as to repair the evil that I had done. 
I took Brigitte in my arms, and I made her repeat, a 
hundred times, a thousand times, that she loved me and 
that she forgave me. I spoke of expiating my wrong- 
doings and of blowing out my brains if I resumed mal- 
treating her. These transports of the heart lasted whole 
nights, during which I did not cease to speak, to weep, 
to roll at Brigitte’s feet, to intoxicate myself with an 
unbounded, enervating, mad love. Then morning came, 
day appeared ; I fell exhausted, I went to sleep, and I 
reawoke with a smile on my lips, mocking at everything 
and believing in nothing. 

During those nights of terrible joy, Brigitte did not 
appear to remember that there was in me another man 
than he whom she had before her eyes. When I asked 
her forgiveness she shrugged her shoulders, as if to say 
to me : ‘ ‘ Do you not know that I forgive you ? ’ ’ She 
felt herself smitten with my fever. How often I saw 
her, pale from pleasure and from love, saying to me that 
she wanted me thus, that those storms were her life; 
that the sufferings which she had endured were dear to 
her thus paid for, that she would never complain as long 
as there remained in my heart a spark of our love ; that 
she knew that she would die of it, but that she hoped that 
I would die of it myself; in fine, that everything was 
good to her, was sweet to her, coming from me, insults 
as well as tears, and that these delights were her tomb. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


267 


Yet the days were passing, and my evil was inces- 
santly growing worse, my attacks of spitefulness and 
irony were assuming a sombre and unmanageable char- 
acter. Amid my follies I had veritable attacks of fever 
that struck me down like lightning flashes; I awoke 
trembling in all my members and bathed in a cold per- 
spiration. An impulse of surprise, an unexpected im- 
pression, made me jump so as to frighten those who saw 
me ; Brigitte, on her part, though she did not complain, 
bore on her countenance marks of a profound change. 
When I began to maltreat her, she left without saying a 
word and shut herself up. Thank God, I never laid 
violent hands on her: in my worst fits of violence, I 
would have died rather than touch her. 

One evening, the rain was beating against the window 
panes; we were alone, the curtains drawn. “ I feel in a 
pleasant mood,” I said to Brigitte, “and yet this horri- 
ble weather makes me sad in spite of myself. We must 
not let ourselves become so, and, if you are of my 
opinion, we will amuse ourselves despite the storm.” 

I arose and lit all the candles that were to be found in 
the candlesticks. The room, rather small, was suddenly 
lit up by them as if with a festal light. At the same 
time a raging fire — the winter had come — shed a stifling 
warmth there. “ Come,” I said, “what are we going to 
do while waiting for supper-time to arrive? ” 

I bethought me that in Paris it was then carnival 
time. It seemed to me that I saw passing before me the 


268 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


maskers’ carriages that were crossing one another on the 
boulevards. I heard the joyous crowd exchange a thou- 
sand astounding remarks on entering the theatres ; I saw 
the lascivious dances, the variegated costumes, the wine 
and the foolery; all that was youthful in me made my 
heart bound. 

“ Let us disguise ourselves,” I said to Brigitte. “It 
will be for us alone; what matters it? If we have no 
costumes, we have the wherewith to make them, and 
thereby we will pass the time more pleasantly.’’ 

From a wardrobe we took dresses, shawls, cloaks, 
capes, artificial flowers; Brigitte, as ever, displayed a 
patient gayety. We both of us travestied each other; 
she wanted to dress my hair herself; we had put on rouge 
and we had powdered ourselves ; all that we needed for 
that had been found in an old casket which, I believe, 
came from the aunt. At last, after an hour’s time, we 
no longer recognized each other. The evening was spent 
in singing, in imagining a thousand silly things; towards 
one o’clock in the morning, it was time for supper. 

We had explored all the wardrobes; there was one 
near me that had remained open. On sitting down to 
take my place at table, I noticed on a shelf in it the 
book of which I have already spoken, in which Brigitte 
often wrote. 

“Is it not the collection of your thoughts?” I asked 
as I extended my hand and took it. “ If it is not an 
indiscretion, allow me to cast my eyes over it.” 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


269 


I opened the book, though Brigitte made a motion to 
prevent me from doing so ; on the first page I fell on 
these words : This is my testament ! 

Everything was written in a steady hand; I found 
there first a faithful narrative, without bitterness and 
without anger, of all that Brigitte had suffered through 
me since she had been my mistress. She declared her 
firm determination to bear everything as long as I loved 
her and to die when I left her. Her arrangements were 
made ; she took account, day by day, of the sacrifice of 
her life. What she had lost, what she had hoped for, 
the frightful isolation in which she found herself even in 
my arms, the ever-growing barrier that was interposed 
between us, the cruelties with which I rewarded her love 
and her resignation ; all that was related without com- 
plaint ; on the contrary, she took it as a task to justify me. 
Finally, she reached the details of her personal affairs 
and regulated what regarded her heirs. It was by poison, 
she said, that she would put an end to her life. She 
would die of her own will, and expressly forbade that her 
memory should ever serve as a pretext for any proceeding 
against me. “ Pray for him ! ” such were her last words. 

I found in the wardrobe, on the same shelf, a small 
box that I had already seen, full of a fine bluish powder, 
like salt. 

“ What is that? ” I asked Brigitte as I raised the box 
to my lips. She gave a terrible scream and threw her- 
self on me. 


270 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


“ Brigitte,” I said to her, “ bid me adieu. I take this 
box away ; you will forget me and you will live, if you 
want to spare me a murder. I will leave this very night, 
and do not ask any pardon of you; you will grant 
me that, although God should not. Give me a last 
kiss.” 

I leaned toward her and kissed her brow. “ Not 
yet!” she exclaimed in anguish. But I pushed her 
back on the sofa and rushed out of the room. 

Three hours later I was ready to leave, and the post- 
horses had arrived. Rain was still falling, and I groped 
my way into the carriage. At the same moment the 
postilion started ; I felt two arms that were clasping my 
body and heard but a sob that died on my lips. 

It was Brigitte. I did everything I could to prevail 
upon her to remain ; I called out to stop ; I told her all 
that I could imagine to persuade her to get out ; I went 
even so far as to promise that I would one day return to 
her, when time and travel should have effaced the 
memory of the evil that I had done to her. I tried to 
prove to her that what had been yesterday would be 
again to-morrow ; I repeated to her that I could only 
make her unhappy, that for her to cling to me was to 
make me an assassin. I used entreaty, oaths, even 
menace; she had only one answer for me: “You are 
going, take me ; let us leave the country, let us leave 
the past. We can no longer live here, let us go else- 
where, whither you will ; let us go and die in a corner 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


271 


of the earth. We must be happy, I through you, you 
through me.” 

I embraced her with such transport that I believed I 
felt my heart breaking. “ Start, then ! ” I called to the 
postilion. We threw ourselves into each other’s arms, 
and the horses went off at a gallop. 

























PART FIFTH 




































PART FIFTH 


I 


Having settled on a long journey, we had come to 
Paris ; the necessary preparations and the business to be 
attended to required some time, and it was necessary to 
take apartments in a furnished house for a month. 

The resolve to leave France had changed the face of 
everything: joy, hope, confidence, all had returned at 
the same time ; no more sorrow, no more quarrels in 
presence of the thought of early departure. We were 
occupied only with dreams of happiness, oaths of eternal 
love ; I wanted, in fact, to make my dear mistress for- 
ever forget all the evils that she had suffered. How 
could I resist so many proofs of an affection so tender 
and a resignation so courageous? Not only did Brigitte 

275 


276 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


forgive me, but she got ready to make me the greatest 
sacrifice and to leave all to follow me. The more I felt 
myself unworthy of the devotion that she showed to me, 
the more I wanted my love in the future to reward her ; 
at last my good angel had triumphed, and admiration 
and love gained the upper hand in my heart. 

Leaning near me, Brigitte was looking on the map 
for the place whither we were going to bury ourselves * 
we had not yet decided on it, and we found in this 
uncertainty a pleasure so keen and so new that we 
feigned, so to say, not to be able to fix on anything. 
During these searches our brows were touching each 
other, my arm was around Brigitte’s waist. “Whither 
shall we go? what shall we do? where will the new life 
begin?” How shall I tell what I felt when, amid so 
many hopes, I occasionally raised my head for a mo- 
ment ? What repentance penetrated me at the sight of 
that beautiful and tranquil countenance which was smil- 
ing at the future, still pale from the sorrows of the past ! 
When I was holding her thus and her finger was wander- 
ing over the map, while she was speaking in a low voice 
of her affairs which she was arranging, of her desires, of 
our future retreat, I would have given my blood for 
her. Happiness anticipated, you are, perhaps, the only 
veritable happiness here below ! 

After about a week, during which our time was spent 
in running around and making small purchases, a young 
man presented himself at our house : he brought letters 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


277 


to Brigitte. After the conversation that he had with 
her I found her sad and downcast ; but I was unable 
to learn anything else of it, except that the letters were 

from N , that same town where, for the first time, I 

had spoken of my love, and where dwelt the only rela- 
tives whom Brigitte still had. 

Our preparations, however, were being made rapidly, 
and there was room in my heart only for the impatience 
of starting ; at the same time, the joy that I felt left me 
scarcely a moment’s rest. When I arose in the morning, 
and when the sun was shining through our windows, I 
felt such transports in me that I was as if intoxicated 
with them ; I then entered on tiptoe the room in which 
Brigitte was sleeping. More than once, on awaking, 
she found me on my ktiees at the foot of her bed, look- 
ing at her sleeping and not able to restrain my tears ; I 
knew not by what means to convince her of the sincerity 
of my repentance. If my love for my first mistress had 
made me commit follies of old, I now committed a 
hundred times more of them : everything strange and 
violent, which passion carried to excess can inspire, I 
sought most eagerly. It was a worship that I had for 
Brigitte, and, though her lover for over six months, it 
seemed to me, when I approached her, that I saw her 
for the first time ; I scarcely dared kiss the hem of the 
dress of that woman whom I had so long maltreated. 
Her slightest words made me bound, as if her voice had 
been new to me ; sometimes I threw myself into her 


27S 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


arms sobbing and sometimes I burst out laughing with- 
out reason ; I spoke of my past conduct only with horror 
and disgust, and I could have wished that there existed 
somewhere a temple dedicated to love, there to purify 
myself in a baptism and to cover myself with a dis- 
tinguishing vestment that nothing could, henceforward, 
snatch from me. 

I have seen Titian’s St. Thomas, laying his finger on 
Christ’s wound, andT have often thought of him : if I 
dared compare love to a man’s faith in his God, I might 
say that I resembled him. What name is borne by the 
feeling expressed by that restless head, almost doubting 
still and already adoring? He touches the wound; 
astonished blasphemy stops on his open lips, on which 
prayer sweetly takes its place. Is he an apostle ? is he 
an impious man? does he repent as much as he has 
offended ? Neither he, nor the painter, nor you who are 
looking at him, know anything about it; the Saviour 
smiles, and everything is absorbed as a drop of dew, in 
a ray of the immense goodness. 

It was thus that, in Brigitte’s presence, I was mute 
and, as it were, incessantly surprised; I trembled lest 
she preserved only fears and lest so many changes which 
she had seen in me would make her distrustful. But, 
after a fortnight, she had read clearly in my heart ; she 
understood that on seeing her sincere, I had become so 
in my turn, and, as my love came from her courage, she 
did not doubt the one any more than the other. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


2 79 


Our room was full of clothing in disorder, of albums, 
of crayons, of books, of packages, and over all that, 
ever spread out, the dear map that we loved so much. 
We were moving here and there ; I stopped every 
moment to cast myself at Brigitte’s knees, she treated 
me as a sluggard, saying laughingly that it was necessary 
for her to do everything and that I was good for nothing ; 
and, while getting the trunks ready, plans proceeded as 
may be supposed. It was a far journey to reach Sicily ; 
but the winter is so pleasant there ! it is the finest of 
climates. Genoa is very beautiful with its painted 
houses, its green espalier gardens, and the Apennines 
behind it ! But how much noise ! What a multitude ! 
Of every three men who pass in the streets, one is a monk 
and another a soldier. Florence is sad ; it is the Middle 
Ages, still living in the midst of us. How bear those 
grated windows and that frightful brown color with 
which the houses are all daubed? What could we do 
in Rome? we do not travel to dazzle ourselves, and 
still less to learn nothing. If we went to the banks of 
the Rhine? but the season will be over there, and, 
though one is not in search of people, it is always sad to 
go where it happens that the place is deserted. But 
Spain ? too many impediments would delay us there : 
it is necessary to move there as in war and to wait for 
everything, except rest. Let us go to Switzerland ! if 
so many people travel there, let us leave the fools to 
make light of it; it is there, that bloom in all their 


280 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


splendor, the three colors dearest to God : the azure of 
the heavens, the verdure of the plains, and the whiteness 
of the snows on the summit of the glaciers. “Let us 
leave, let us leave,” said Brigitte, “let us fly like two 
birds. Let us picture to ourselves, my dear Octave, 
that it is since yesterday we have known each other. 
You met me at the ball, I pleased you, and I love you ; 
you tell me that a few leagues from here, I know not 
in what little town, you loved a Madame Pierson ; what 
has passed between you and her, I do not desire even 
to believe. Are you not going to confide to me your 
intrigues with a woman whom you have left for me ? I 
will whisper to you, in my turn, that it is not yet very 
long since I loved a bad character who made me rather 
unhappy ; you pity me, you impose silence on me, and 
it is agreed between us that it will never be discussed.” 

When Brigitte was speaking thus, ' what I felt re- 
sembled avarice ; I clasped her with trembling arms. 
“O God! ” I exclaimed, “I know not whether it is 
joy or fear that makes me shudder. I am going to 
carry you off, my treasure. Before that immense 
horizon, you are mine ; we are going to leave. Perish 
my youth, perish memories, perish all care and regret ! 
O my good and noble mistress ! you have made a man 
of a child ! if I lost you now, never could I love. Per- 
haps, before knowing you, another woman might have 
been able to cure me ; but now, you are the only one in 
the world who can kill me or save me, for I bear in my 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


281 


heart the wound of all the evil that I have done to you. 
I have been ungrateful, blind, and cruel. God be 
blessed ! you love me still. If ever you return to the 
village in which I saw you under the lindens, look at 
that deserted house; there must be a ghost there, for 
the man who leaves it with you is not he who entered 
there. ’ * 

“ Is it indeed true ? ’ ’ said Brigitte ; and her fine brow, 
all radiant with love, was then raised towards heaven — 
“is it indeed true that I am yours? Yes, far from that 
odious world that has aged you before your time, yes, 
child, you are going to love. I will have you such as 
you are, and, whatever be the corner of the earth to 
which we go to find life, you will there forget me, 
without remorse, the day on which you will cease to 
love. My mission will be fulfilled, and there will still 
remain a God on high to thank for it.” 

With what a poignant and frightful memory those 
words still fill me! At last, it was decided that we 
would go first to Geneva, and that we would choose at 
the foot of the Alps a quiet place for the spring. Brigitte 
was already speaking of the beautiful lake ; already was 
I breathing in my heart the breath of the wind that agi- 
tates it and the enlivening odor of the green valley; 
already Lausanne, Vevey, the Oberland, and beyond 
the summits of Mount Rosa, the immense plain of 
Lombardy, forgetfulness, rest, flight, all the spirits of 
the happy solitudes were bidding us and inviting us ; 


282 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


already, when, in the evening, with joined hands, we 
looked at each other in silence, we felt arising in us that 
feeling, full of a strange grandeur, which takes posses- 
sion of the heart on the eve of long journeys, a secret 
and inexplicable vertigo which at the same time partakes 
of the terrors of exile and of the hopes of pilgrimage. 
O God ! it is Thy voice itself which then calls and 
which warns man that he must go to Thee. Are there 
not in human thought, wings that shudder and sonorous 
chords that stretch ? What shall I say to you ? is there 
not a world in these mere words : “ Everything was 
ready, we were going to start?” 

All of a sudden Brigitte becomes languid ; she droops 
her head, she keeps silent. When I ask her if she is 
suffering, she tells me no, in a faint voice; when I 
speak to her of the day of departure, she arises, cold 
and resigned, and continues her preparations; when I 
swear to her that she is going to be happy, and that I 
purpose to devote my life to her, she shuts herself up to 
weep ; when I embrace her, she becomes pale and turns 
away her eyes while extending her lips to me ; when I 
tell her that nothing is yet done, that she can give up 
our plans, she knits her brow with a severe and wild air ; 
when I entreat her to open her heart to me, when I repeat 
to her that, were I to die of it, I will sacrifice my happiness, 
if ever it is going to cost her a regret, she throws herself 
on my neck, then stops and pushes me away as if invol- 
untarily. At last, I one day enter her room, holding 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


283 


in my hand a ticket on which our seats are marked for 
the Besangon coach. I approach her, I lay it down on 
her knees, she extends her arms, utters a cry, and falls 
unconscious at my feet. 


II 


All my efforts to discover the cause of a change so 
unexpected had remained without result, like the ques- 
tions that I had been able to put. Brigitte was ill, and 
obstinately kept silent. After a whole day, spent some- 
times in entreating her to explain herself, sometimes in 
exhausting myself in conjectures, I had gone out without 
knowing whither I was going. On passing near the 
Opera, an agent offered me a ticket, and mechanically 
I entered, as was my custom. 

I could not pay attention to what was going on, 
either on the stage or in the audience : I was so crushed 
with grief and, at the same time so stupefied that, so to 
say, I lived only within myself, and external objects no 
longer seemed to strike my senses. All my concen- 
trated strength, was directed on one thought, and the 
more I turned it over in my head, the less clearly could 
I see into it. What frightful obstacle, suddenly inter- 
posed, was thus, on the eve of departure, upsetting so 
many plans and hopes? If an ordinary event or even a 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


veritable calamity, as of a change of fortune or of the 
loss of some friend were involved, why that obstinate 
silence? After all that Brigitte had done, at a moment 
when our most cherished dreams seemed near being real- 
ized, of what nature could a secret be that was destroy- 
ing our happiness and that she refused to confide to me? 
What! it is from me that she is concealing herself! If 
her sorrows, her business, even fear of the future, or 
any cause of sadness, of uncertainty or of wrath, keep 
her here for some time or make her give up forever 
that journey so desired, why should she not be open 
with me ? In the condition in which my heart was, I 
could not, however, suppose that there was anything to 
blame in that. The mere appearance of a suspicion 
was revolting and horrified me. Why, on the other 
hand, believe in inconstancy or in caprice merely in 
that woman such as I knew her? I was lost in an 
abyss, and did not even see the faintest glimmer, the 
slightest point that could fix my position. 

There was in front of me, in the gallery, a young 
man whose features were not unknown to me. As often 
happens when one has his mind preoccupied, I was 
looking at him without taking account of it and I 
was trying to connect his name with his countenance. 
All of a sudden I recognized him : it was he who, as I 

have said above, had brought letters from N to 

Brigitte. I arose in a hurry to go and speak to him, 
without thinking of what I was doing. He occupied a 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


285 


seat which I could not reach without disturbing a large 
number of spectators, and I was compelled to wait for 
an intermission. 

My first impulse had been to think that, if any one 
could enlighten me on the only care that disturbed me, 
it was this young man rather than any one else. He 
had had several conversations with Madame Pierson 
during the past few days, and I remembered that, when 
he had left her, I had found her constantly sad, not only 
on the first day, but every time that he had come. He 
had seen her the previous day, the very morning of the 
day on which she had become ill. The letters that he 
brought, Brigitte had not shown to me ; it was possible 
that he knew the real reason that delayed our depart- 
ure. Perhaps he was not entirely in the secret, but 
he could not fail to tell me at least what were the 
contents of those letters, and I must have supposed 
that he was sufficiently acquainted with our affairs for 
me not to be afraid to interrogate him. I was delighted 
at having found him, and, as soon as the curtain was 
lowered, I ran to join him in the lobby. I do not 
know whether he saw me coming, but he moved away 
and entered a box. I resolved to wait until he came out 
and remained a quarter of an hour walking, ever look- 
ing at the box door. It opened at last, he came out ; I 
saluted him at once from afar as I advanced to meet him. 
He took a few steps with an irresolute air; then, turning 
suddenly, he went down the stairway, and disappeared. 


286 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


My intention of approaching him had been too evi- 
dent for him to be able to escape me thus without a 
formal design of avoiding me. He must have recog- 
nized my countenance, and moreover, even though he 
did not, a man who sees another coming to him ought at 
least to wait for him. We were alone in the lobby when 
I advanced towards him, so it was beyond doubt that 
he did not want to speak to me. I did not dream of 
seeing an impertinence in that : a man who came every 
day into a tenement in which I dwelt, to whom I had 
always given a good reception when I had met him, 
whose manners were simple and modest, how could I 
think that he wanted to insult me? He had wished 
only to shun me and to dispense with a disagreeable 
conversation. Why again ? This second mystery dis- 
turbed me almost as much as the first. Whatever I did 
to remove this idea, that young man’s disappearance 
was invincibly connected in my head with Brigitte’s 
obstinate silence. 

Uncertainty is of all torments the most difficult to 
bear, and on several occasions in my life I have exposed 
myself to great misfortunes for want of being able to 
wait patiently. When I returned home I found Brigitte 

reading just those fatal letters from N , I told her 

that it was impossible for me to remain longer in the 
condition of mind in which I then was, and that, at 
any cost, I wanted to leave ; that I wished to know, 
whatever it might be, the reason for the sudden change 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


287 


that had taken place in her, and that, if she declined to 
answer, I would regard her silence as a positive refusal 
to start with me, and even as an order to go away from 
her forever. 

She showed me reluctantly one of the letters that she 
was holding. Her relatives wrote to her that her de- 
parture dishonored her forever, that no one was igno- 
rant of its cause, and that they believed themselves 
obliged to declare to her in advance what would be 
its results ; that she was living publicly as my mistress, 
and that, though she was free and a widow, she had 
yet to answer for the name that she bore ; that neither 
they nor any of her former friends would see her again 
if she persisted; in fine, by all sorts of threats and 
advice, they entreated her to return to the country. 

The tone of that letter made me indignant, and I 
saw in it at first only an insult. “And that young 
man who brings you these remonstrances,” I exclaimed, 
“no doubt is charged to make them to you verbally, 
and he does not fail to do so, is not that true ? ’ ’ 

Brigitte’s deep sorrow made me reflect and calmed 
my wrath. “You will,” she said to me, “do by me 
what you desire, and will complete my ruin. And 
so indeed my fate is in your hands, and it is a long 
time since you have been its master. Take such re- 
venge as you please on the last effort that my old friends 
are making to recall me to reason, to the world, which 
I formerly respected, and to honor, which I have lost. 


288 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


I have not a word to say, and, if you wish to dictate 
my answer, I will make it such as you desire. ’ ’ 

“I desire nothing,” I replied, “but to know your 
intentions; it is for me, on the contrary, to conform 
to them, and, I swear to you, I am ready to do so. 
Tell me whether you remain, whether you depart, or 
if it be necessary that I depart alone. ’ ’ 

“Why this question?” Brigitte asked; “have I told 
you that I had changed my mind ? Iam suffering and 
cannot leave thus ; but as soon as I shall be well or only 
in a condition to get up, we will go to Geneva, as has 
been agreed upon.” 

We separated at these words, and the mortal coldness 
in which she had spoken them saddened me more than 
a refusal would have done. It was not the first time 
that, by advice of this sort, they had tried to break off 
our companionship ; but until now, whatever impres- 
sion such letters had made on Brigitte, she had soon 
got rid of it. Why believe that this single motive had 
such influence on her to-day, when it had been of no 
avail in less happy times? I questioned whether, in 
my actions since we had been in Paris, I had done 
anything with which to reproach myself. “Can it be 
merely,” I said to myself, “the weakness of a woman 
who has wanted to take an obstinate course and who, at 
the moment of carrying it out, recoils before her own 
will ? Can it be what libertines would call a last scruple ? 
But that gayety which a week ago Brigitte showed from 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


289 


morning until evening, those plans so sweet, abandoned, 
resumed incessantly ! those promises, those protesta- 
tions, all that, however, was frank, real, without any 
constraint. It was in spite of me that she wanted to 
start. No, there is some mystery in that; and how 
know it, if now, when I question her, she pays me 
with a reason that cannot be the true one ? I cannot 
tell her that she is lying or compel her to give any 
other reply. She tells me that she is ever anxious to 
start ; but, if she says so in that tone, should I not 
absolutely refuse ? Can I accept such a sacrifice, when 
it is accomplished as a task, as a condemnation ? when 
what I believed to have been offered to me by love, I 
come, so to say, to demand it by pledged word? O 
God ! is it then this pale and languishing creature that I 
would carry off in my arms? Would I take away so far 
from the fatherland, for so long a time, for life perhaps, 
only a resigned victim? I will do, she says, what is 
pleasing to you ! No, certainly, it will not please me 
to ask anything of patience, and, rather than see that 
countenance suffering for only another week, if she keeps 
silent, I will set out alone.” 

Madman that I was ! had I the strength for it ? I had 
been too happy for a fortnight past to dare truly to look 
backwards, and, far from feeling that I had such courage, 
I dreamt only of the means of taking Brigitte away. I 
spent the night without closing an eye, and next day, in 
the early morning, I resolved, at all hazards, to go to 


290 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


the young man’s house whom I had seen at the Opera. 
I do not know whether it was wrath or curiosity that 
drove me thither, or what in reality I wanted of him ; 
but I thought that in this way he could not at least 
avoid me, and that was all that I desired. 

As I did not know his address, I went to Brigitte’s 
room to ask for it, pleading compliment that I owed 
him after all the visits that he had paid us ; for I had 
not said a word of my meeting at the theatre. Brigitte 
was in bed, and her wearied eyes showed that she had 
been weeping. When I entered, she reached out her 
hand and said to me: “What do you want of me?” 
Her voice was sad, but tender. We exchanged a 
few amicable words, and I left with my heart less 
desolate. 

The young man whom I was going to see was named 
Smith ; he lived a short distance away. On knocking at 
his door, an indescribable restlessness took hold of me ; 
I advanced slowly and as if suddenly struck by an 
unlooked-for light. At his first gesture, my blood froze. 
He was lying down, and, with the same tone as Brigitte 
had a little while ago, with a countenance as pale and as 
worn, he reached out his hand and said the same words: 
“ What do you want of me ? ” 

One may think of it what one will ; there are chances 
in life that man’s reason cannot explain. I sat down 
without being able to reply, and, as if I had awakened 
from a dream, I repeated to myself the question that he 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 291 

addressed to me. What indeed had I come to do at his 
house ? how tell him what brought me ? Supposing that 
it could be useful to me to interrogate him, how was I 
to know whether he would speak? He had brought 
letters whose writers he knew, but did not I know of 
them to the same extent as he did, after what Brigitte 
had just shown me ? It cost me the putting of questions 
to him, and I was afraid lest he would suspect what was 
passing through my heart. The first words that we 
exchanged were polite and insignificant. I thanked him 
for having taken charge of the messages for Madame 
Pierson’s family; ! told him that on leaving France we 
would entreat him in our turn to do us some services ; 
after which we remained in silence, astonished at finding 
ourselves face to face with each other. 

I looked around me, like people embarrassed. The 
room occupied by that young man was on the fifth 
floor ; everything there betokened an honest and labori- 
ous poverty. A few books, musical instruments, white 
wooden frames, papers in order on a cloth-covered 
table, an old arm-chair and some other chairs, that was 
all ; but everything betokened an air of cleanliness and 
of care that made of it an agreeable collection. As for 
himself, an open and animated countenance made a first 
impression in his favor. I noticed on the mantel-piece 
the portrait of an aged woman ; I approached it in an 
entirely dreamy way, and he told me that it was his 
mother. 


292 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


I then remembered that Brigitte had often spoken to 
me of him, and a thousand details that I had forgotten, 
returned to my memory. Brigitte had known him since 
his childhood. Before I came to the country she saw 

him sometimes at N ; but, since my arrival, she had 

gone there only once, and he was not there at that 
moment. It was only, then, by chance that I had 
learned some particulars concerning him, which, how- 
ever, had struck me. He had as his only means a 
modest situation that enabled him to support a mother 
and a sister. His conduct towards these two women 
merited the highest praise; he deprived himself of 
everything for them, and though, as a musician, he 
possessed valuable talents which might lead to fortune, 
extreme probity and reserve had always made him prefer 
rest to the chances of success that had been presented to 
him. In a word, he was of that small number of beings 
who live without bustle and do others the favor of not 
noticing what they are worth. 

I had been told of certain traits of his that suffice to 
paint a man : he had been very much in love with a 
beautiful girl of his neighborhood, and after more than 
a year’s attention, consent was granted to give her to 
him as his wife. She was as poor as he was. The con- 
tract was going to be signed and everything was ready 
for the nuptials, when his mother said to him: 4 ‘And 
your sister, who will marry her ? ’ ’ These few words 
gave him to understand that, if he took a wife, he would 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


293 


spend for his housekeeping all that he would earn by his 
work, and that consequently his sister would have no 
dowry. He at once broke off all that had been begun 
and courageously gave up his marriage and his love ; it 
was then that he came to Paris and obtained the situa- 
tion that he had. 

I had never heard this story, of which people spoke 
in the country, without desiring to know its hero. That 
tranquil and obscure devotedness had seemed to me 
more admirable than all the glories of battlefields. On 
seeing his mother’s portrait I remembered it at once, 
and, turning my gaze on him, I was astonished at finding 
him so young. I could not help asking him his age ; it 
was mine. Eight o’clock struck, and he arose. 

At the first steps that he took I saw him falter ; he 
shook his head. “ What ails you? ” I said to him. He 
answered that it was the hour for going to the office, and 
that he did not feel strong enough to walk. 

“Are you ill? ” 

“I have fever, and I am suffering cruelly.” 

“You felt better yesterday evening; I saw you, I 
think, at the Opera.” 

“Excuse me for not having recognized you. I have 
a pass to that theatre, and I hope to find you there 
again. ’ 9 

The more I examined that young man, that room, that 
house, the less I felt strength enough to approach the 
real object of my visit. The idea that I had had the 


294 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


evening before, that he had been able to injure me in 
Brigitte’s mind, vanished in spite of me; I found in 
him an air of frankness and, at the same time, of sever- 
ity that stopped me and imposed on me. Gradually 
my thoughts took another direction ; I looked at him 
attentively, and it seemed to me that on his part he was 
also observing me with curiosity. 

We were both of us twenty-one, and what a difference 
between us ! He, habituated to an existence, the move- 
ments of which were determined by the regulated sound 
of a clock; having never seen of life but the way from 
an isolated room to an office buried in a ministry; send- 
ing to a mother the very savings, that mite of human 
joy which is clasped with so much avarice by every hand 
that works ; complaining of a night of suffering because 
it deprived him of a day of fatigue; having but one 
thought, but one good, to watch over the well-being of 
another, and that from his childhood, since he had arms ! 
and I, with that valuable time, rapid, inexorable, with 
that time that absorbs the fruits of sweating labor, what 
had I done ? was I a man ? Which of us had lived ? 

What I say there on one page, a look is necessary for 
us to feel. Our eyes had just met and did not leave 
each other. He spoke to me of my journey and of the 
country that we were going to visit. 

“When do you set out? ” he asked me. 

“I do not know; Madame Pierson is suffering and 
has kept to her bed for three days.” 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


295 

“ For three days ! ” he repeated with an involuntary 
impulse. 

“Yes, what is there in it that astonishes you?” 

He arose and threw himself on me, his arms extended 
and his eyes fixed. A terrible shudder made him start. 

“ Are you suffering? ” I said to him as I took hold of 
his hand. But at the same instant he raised it to his 
face, and, not being able to suppress his tears, he 
dragged himself slowly to his bed. 

I looked at him with surprise ; the violent attack of 
his fever had broken him down all of a sudden. I 
hesitated to leave him in that state, and I approached 
him anew. He thrust me back forcibly and as if 
with a strange terror. When he at last returned to 
himself : 

“ Excuse me,” he said in a weak voice; “I am not 
in a condition to receive you. Be so good as to leave 
me ; as soon as my strength will allow me, I will go and 
thank you for your visit.” 


in 


Brigitte was feeling better. As she had told me, she 
had wanted to leave as soon as she was well. But I was 
opposed to it, and we had to wait for a fortnight yet 
until she was in a condition to bear the journey. 


296 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


Ever sad and silent, yet she was gentle. Whatever I 
did to get her to speak to me open-heartedly, the letter 
that she had shown to me was, she said, the only reason 
for her melancholy, and she entreated me that there be 
no further reference to it. Thus, reduced myself to keep 
silent like her, I vainly sought to see what was passing 
in her heart. Familiar talk was weighing on both of 
us, and we went to the theatre every evening. There, 
seated beside each other, in the end of a box, we some- 
times pressed each other’s hands ; from time to time a 
fine piece of music, a word that struck us, made us ex- 
change friendly looks; but, on going, as well as on 
returning, we remained mute, plunged in our thoughts. 
Twenty times a day I felt myself ready to throw myself 
at her feet and to ask her, as a favor, to give me the 
death-blow or to give me the happiness that I had 
glimpses of; twenty times, on the point of doing so, 
I saw her features change ; she arose and left me, or, 
by an icy word, stopped my heart on my lips. 

Smith came almost every day. Though his presence 
in the house had been the cause of all the evil, and 
though the visit that I had paid him had left singular 
suspicions in my mind, the manner in which he spoke of 
our journey, his good faith and his simplicity, reassured 
me about him. I had spoken to him of the letters that 
he had brought, and he had appeared to me not so much 
offended thereat, but more sad than I. He was ignorant 
of their contents, and the friendship of long standing 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 297 

that he had for Brigitte made him blame them loudly. 
He would not have taken charge of them, he said, if he 
had known what they contained. By the reserved tone 
that Madame Pierson kept towards him, I could not 
believe that he was in her confidence. I saw him, then, 
with pleasure, though there was always between us a sort 
of stiffness and ceremony. He had undertaken to be, 
after our departure, the intermediary between Brigitte 
and her family and to prevent an open rupture. The 
esteem that people had for him in the country was not 
to be of small importance in this negotiation, and I 
could not help feeling kindly towards him for it. He 
was the noblest of characters. When we were all three 
together, if he noticed any coldness or any constraint, 
I saw him make every effort to bring back gayety be- 
tween us ; if he seemed restless at what was going on, 
it was always without indiscretion and so as to give us to 
understand that he wished to see us happy ; if he spoke 
of our connection, it was, so to say, with respect and 
as a man to whom love was a bond, sacred in God’s 
presence; in short, he was a sort of friend, and he 
inspired me with full confidence. 

But, notwithstanding all that and in spite of his own 
efforts, he was sad, and I could not overcome strange 
thoughts that took hold of me. The tears that I had 
seen that young man shed, his malady coming precisely 
at the same time as that of my mistress, and the thought 
that I discovered an indescribable, melancholy sympathy 


298 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


between them, troubled and disturbed me. It was not 
a month since, on slighter suspicions, I would have 
had paroxysms of jealousy ; but now, of what suspect 
Brigitte? Whatever might be the secret that she was 
concealing from me, was she not going to leave with 
me? Even, indeed, had it been possible that Smith 
was in the confidence of some mystery of which I was 
ignorant, of what nature could that mystery be ? What 
could there have been that was blamable in their sad- 
ness and in their friendship? She had known him as 
a child; she saw him again after long years, just as she 
was leaving France ; she found herself in an unfortunate 
position, and chance willed that he should be informed 
of it, that he should have served even in some manner 
as an instrument for her evil destiny. Was it not quite 
natural that they would exchange some sad looks, that 
the sight of that young man would recall the past to 
Brigitte, some memories and some regrets ? Could he, 
in his turn, see her leave without fear, without thinking, 
in spite of himself, of the chances of a long journey, 
of the risks of a henceforward erring life, almost pro- 
scribed and abandoned ? No doubt that was to be, and 
I felt, when I thought of it, that it was for me to arise, 
to put myself between them both, to reassure them, to 
make them believe in me, to say to the one that my arm 
would support her as long as she wished to be supported 
on it, to the other that I was grateful to him for the 
affection that he had shown us and for the services that 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


299 

he was going to render us. I felt it and could not 
do it. A mortal cold pressed upon my heart, and I 
remained in my arm-chair. 

When Smith had left in the evening, either we were 
silent, or we spoke of him. I do not know what odd 
attraction made me ask Brigitte every day for fresh 
details on his account. She had, however, to tell me 
about him only what I have said to the reader ; his life 
had never been anything else but what it was, poor, 
obscure, and honest. To relate it entirely, few words 
sufficed ; but I had them repeated to me incessantly, and 
without knowing why I took an interest in them. 

On reflecting on them, there was at the bottom of my 
heart a secret suffering that I did not acknowledge. If 
that young man arrived at the moment of our joy, if he 
brought to Brigitte an unimportant letter, if he clasped 
her hand as she was going into the carriage, would I 
have paid the slightest attention to it? If he had 
recognized me or not at the Opera, if tears, of whose 
cause I was ignorant, escaped from him in my presence, 
what mattered it to me, if I were happy? But, while 
not being able to see into the reason for Brigitte’s sad- 
ness, I saw clearly that my past conduct, whatever she 
could say of it, was not now foreign to her sorrows. If 
I had been what I ought to have been for the past six 
months that we had been living together, nothing in the 
world, I knew, would have been able to trouble our 
love. Smith was only an ordinary man, but he was 


3 °° 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


good and devoted, his simple and modest qualities 
resembled large clear lines that the eye catches without 
difficulty and at first glance ; in a quarter of an hour one 
knew him, and he inspired confidence, if not admira- 
tion. I could not help saying to myself that, if he had 
been Brigitte’s lover, she would have gone off gladly 
with him. 

It was of my own will that I had delayed our depart- 
ure, and already I repented of it. Brigitte also some- 
times urged me: “What is stopping us?” she said; 
“here I am well, everything is ready.” What was 
stopping me indeed ? I do not know. 

Seated near the mantel-piece, I was fixing my eyes 
alternately on Smith and on my mistress. I saw both of 
them pale, serious, mute. I knew not why they were so, 
and in spite of myself I repeated that the cause was one 
and the same and that one secret only need be learned. 
But it was not one of those vague and weakly suspicions 
that had tormented me of old, it was an invincible, a 
fatal instinct. What strange creatures we are ! I was 
pleased to leave them alone and to abandon them at 
the fireside to go and dream on the quay, to lean on 
the parapet and to look at the water like an idler of the 
streets. 

When they spoke of their sojourn at N and when 

Brigitte, almost playful, assumed a slight motherly tone 
to remind him of their days spent together, it seemed to 
me that I was suffering, and yet I took pleasure in it. I 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


301 


put questions to them ; I spoke to Smith of his mother, of 
his occupations, of his plans. I gave him opportunity to 
show himself in a favorable light and I forced his modesty 
to reveal his merit to us. “You love your sister very 
much, is it not true ? ” I asked him. “ When do you count 
on getting her married ?’ ’ He told us, then, blushingly, 
that housekeeping cost a great deal, that the marriage 
would take place perhaps in two years, perhaps sooner, 
if his health permitted him some extra work that would 
bring him allowances ; that there was in the country a 
family in sufficiently easy circumstances whose eldest son 
was his friend ; that they were almost of the same mind, 
and that happiness might come one day, like rest, with- 
out dreaming of it ; that he had given up to his sister 
the small share of the inheritance which their father 
had left to them ; that his mother was opposed to it, but 
that he would hold to it in spite of her ; that a young 
man ought to live by his hands, whilst the existence of a 
girl was decided the day of her marriage. Thus gradu- 
ally he unfolded to us his whole life and his whole soul, 
and I watched Brigitte listening to him. Then, when 
he arose to withdraw, I accompanied him as far as the 
door, and I remained there pensive, motionless, until the 
sound of his footsteps was lost on the stairway. 

I then returned into my room, and I found Brigitte 
getting ready to undress. I greedily contemplated that 
charming body, those treasures of beauty, which so 
many times I had possessed. I looked at her combing 


3 02 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


her long hair, knotting her kerchief, and turning around 
when her dress slipped to the floor, like a Diana who is 
entering the bath. She got into bed, I rushed to mine ; 
it could not have occurred to my mind that Brigitte was 
deceiving me or that Smith was in love with her ; I did 
not think either of watching them or of taking them by 
surprise. I did not take account of anything. I said 
to myself: “She is very pretty, and that poor Smith 
is an honest youth; they have both of them a great 
sorrow, and I also.” That was breaking my heart and 
at the same time comforted me. 

We had found on reopening our trunks that some 
trifles were still missing from it; Smith had taken it 
upon himself to provide them. He had an indefati- 
gable activity, and he was gratified, he said, when one 
entrusted to him the care of some errands. As I was 
returning home one day, I saw him on the floor fasten- 
ing a portmanteau. Brigitte was in front of a piano 
that we had rented by the week during our sojourn in 
Paris. She was playing one of those old airs into which 
she put so much expression and which had been so dear 
to me. I stopped in the anteroom near the door, which 
was open ; each note entered into my soul : never had 
she sung so sadly and so holily. 

Smith was listening with delight ; he was on his knees, 
holding the buckle of the portmanteau. He pressed it, 
then let it fall, and looked at the clothes that he himself 
had just folded and covered with a white linen. The air 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


303 


finished, he remained thus ; Brigitte, her hands on the 
key-board, was looking afar off at the horizon. I saw 
for the second time tears fall from the young man’s 
eyes ; I was near shedding some myself, and, not know- 
ing what was going on within me, I entered and reached 
out my hand to him. 

“ Were you there ? ” Brigitte asked. She started and 
seemed surprised. 

“Yes, I was there,” I replied to her. “Sing, my 
dear, I entreat you. Let me hear your voice once 
more ! ’ * 

She began again without answering ; to her also it was 
a reminder. She saw my emotion, and Smith’s also ; 
her voice changed. The last sounds, scarcely articulated, 
seemed to be lost in the heavens; she arose and gave 
me a kiss. Smith was still holding my hand ; I felt him 
pressing it with force and convulsively ; he was as pale 
as death. 

On another day, I had brought a lithographed album 
which represented several scenes in Switzerland. We 
all three of us looked at it, and, from time to time, 
when Brigitte found a view that pleased her, she stopped 
to observe it. There was one of them that appeared to 
her to surpass by far all the others, it was a landscape in 
the canton of Vaud, some distance from the Brigues 
road : a green valley planted with apple-trees, where 
cattle grazed in the shade; in the distance, a village 
consisting of a dozen wooden houses scattered irregularly 


3 ° 4 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


through the meadow and terraced on the surrounding 
hills. In the foreground, a young girl, with a large 
straw hat on her head, was seated at the foot of a tree, 
and a farm-boy, standing in front of her, seemed to be 
showing her, with an iron-tipped staff in his hand, the 
road that he had traversed ; he was pointing to a wind- 
ing path that was lost in the mountain. Above them 
appeared the Alps, and the picture was crowned by 
three summits covered with snow, tinted with the shades 
of the setting sun. Nothing was more simple, and at 
the same time nothing was more beautiful than that 
landscape. The valley resembled a lake of verdure, 
and the eye followed its contours with the most perfect 
tranquillity. 

“ Shall we go there? ” I said to Brigitte. I took a 
pencil and traced some lines on the print. 

“ What are you doing?” she asked. 

“ I am trying,” I said to her, “ whether with a little 
skill it would be necessary to make much change in this 
figure to make it resemble you. That young girl’s pretty 
head-dress would become you wonderfully, I think ; and 
might I not, if I succeeded, give to that fine moun- 
taineer some resemblance to myself?” 

This caprice seemed to please her ; and, at once 
taking hold of an eraser, she soon had effaced from the 
sheet the countenance of the boy and that of the girl. 
There I was making her portrait, and she wanted to try 
mine. The figures were very small, so that it was not 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


305 


difficult ; it was agreed that the likenesses were striking, 
and it sufficed indeed to look at our features to find 
them there again. When we had laughed at it the 
book remained open, and, the servant having called me 
for some matter of business, I went out a few moments 
afterwards. 

When I came back, Smith was leaning on the table 
and was looking at the print with so much attention 
that he did not notice that I had returned. He was 
absorbed in a deep reverie ; I resumed my place near the 
fire, and it was only after the first word that I addressed 
to Brigitte that he raised his head. He looked at both 
of us for a moment ; then he took leave of us in haste, 
and, as he was crossing the dining-room, I saw him strike 
his forehead. 

When I caught by surprise these signs of grief, I 
arose and ran to shut myself up. “Well! what is it, 
then? what is it, then?” I repeated. Then I joined my 

hands to supplicate whom ? I know not ; perhaps 

my good angel, perhaps my evil destiny. 


IV 


My heart called out to me to leave, and yet I still 
delayed; in the evening, a secret and bitter desire 
nailed me to my place. When Smith was to come, I 


306 the confession of a 

had no rest until I heard the sound of the bell. How 
happens it that there is in us an unaccountable liking 
for misfortune ? 

Each day a word, a rapid flash, a look, made me 
shudder ; each day another word, another look, by a 
contrary impression, threw me into uncertainty. By 
what inexplicable mystery did I see both of them so 
sad ? By what other mystery did I remain emotionless, 
like a statue, on looking at them, when on more than 
one similar occasion I had shown myself violent even 
to rage ? I had not the strength to budge, I who had 
felt myself in love with those almost ferocious jealousies, 
as one sees them in the East. I passed my days in 
waiting, and I could not say what I was waiting for. I 
sat down in the evening on my bed and said to myself : 
“Let us see, let us think of that.” I put my head 
between my hands, then I exclaimed : “It is impossi- 
ble ! ” and I began again the following day. 

In Smith’s presence, Brigitte showed me more friend- 
ship than when we were alone. He came, one evening, 
just as we had exchanged some rather harsh words ; when 
she heard his voice in the anteroom, she came and sat 
down on my knees. As for him, always quiet and sad, 
it seemed as if he was exercising a continual control 
over himself. His slightest movements were measured ; 
he spoke little and slowly ; but the sudden impulses that 
escaped from him were only the more striking by their 
contrast with his habitual reserve. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 307 

In the circumstance in which I found myself, can I 
ascribe to curiosity the impatience that was devouring 
me? What would I have answered if any one had 
come and said to me: “What matters it to you? you 
are quite curious.” Perhaps, however, it was nothing 
else. 

I remember that one day, at the Pont-Royal, I saw a 
man drowning. With some friends I took what is called 
a full course at the swimming-school, and we were fol- 
lowed by a boat in which were two master swimmers. 
It was in the height of summer; our boat had met 
another, so that there were over thirty of us under the 
great arch of the bridge. Suddenly, in the midst of 
us, a young man is seized with a stroke of apoplexy. I 
hear a cry and I turn round. I saw two hands that 
were in motion on the surface of the water, then every- 
thing disappeared. We plunged at once; it was in 
vain, and only after an hour they succeeded in drawing 
out the dead body, stuck under some floating wood. 

The impression that I felt whilst I was plunging in 
the river will never leave my memory. I looked on all 
sides into the dark and deep masses of water that en- 
veloped me with a dull murmur. As long as I could 
hold my breath, I always plunged deeper; then I re- 
turned to the surface, I exchanged a question with 
some other swimmer as disturbed as myself ; then 
I returned to that human fishing. I was filled with 
horror and hope; the idea that I was, perhaps, going 


3°8 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


to feel myself seized by two convulsive arms caused 
me unspeakable joy and terror ; and it was only when 
worn out with fatigue that I re-entered the boat. 

When debauch does not brutalize a man, one of its 
necessary consequences is a strange curiosity. I have 
spoken above of what I had felt on my first visit to 
Desgenais. I wilTexplain myself further. 

Truth, the skeleton of appearances, requires that 
every man, whoever he may be, shall in his day and his 
hour touch his immortal bones at the bottom of some 
passing sore. That is called knowing the world, and 
experience is at that cost. 

Now it happens that in the face of this trial some 
recoil affrighted ; others, weak and scared, remain vacil- 
lating like shadows. Some creatures, the best, perhaps, 
die of it at once. The greater number forget, and thus 
everything floats toward death. 

But certain men, most certainly unhappy, neither 
recoil nor waver, neither die nor forget : when their 
turn comes to experience misfortune, otherwise called 
truth, they approach it with a firm step, extend the 
hand, and, horrible to relate ! are seized with love for 
the livid drowned one whom they have felt at the 
bottom of the water. They lay hold of him, feel him, 
hug him ; then they are intoxicated with the desire of 
knowing; they no longer look at things but to see 
through them; they no longer do anything but doubt 
and try ; they explore the world as spies of God ; their 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


3°9 


thoughts are sharpened into arrows, and a lynx is born 
in their entrails. 

Debauchees, more than all others, are exposed to this 
madness, and the reason for it is quite simple : on com- 
paring ordinary life to a plane and transparent surface, 
debauchees, in rapid currents, at every moment touch 
bottom. On leaving a ball, for example, they go off 
to some place of ill fame. After having in the waltz 
pressed the modest hand of a virgin, and perhaps having 
made her tremble, they leave, they run, throw their 
cloak aside, and sit down at table rubbing their hands. 
The last phrase that they have just addressed to a pretty 
and honest woman is still on their lips : they repeat it 
as they burst out laughing. What am I saying? do 
they not, for a few pieces of silver, raise up that gar- 
ment which constitutes modesty, the dress, that veil full 
of mystery, which seems itself to respect the being 
whom it embellishes, and surrounds her without touch- 
ing her ? What idea, then, ought they to form of the 
world? they find themselves there at each instant as 
comedians behind the scenes. Who more than they 
is habituated to that search of the bottom of things, 
and, if one may so speak, to those deep and impious 
gropings ? See how they speak of everything : always 
in terms the most indecent, the grossest, the most ab- 
ject ; those only appear to them as true ; everything 
else is but parade, convention, and prejudice. Do they 
relate an anecdote, do they give an account of what 


3 IQ 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


they have experienced : always the dirty and physical 
word, always the letter, always death ! They do not 
say : “That woman has loved me;” they say : “I have 
had that woman; ” they do not say: “ I love; ” they 
say: “I desire;” they never say: “May God grant 
it!” they say everywhere: “If I desire!” I do not 
know what they think of themselves and what solilo- 
quies they hold. 

Whence, inevitably, either slothfulness or curiosity; 
for, whilst they are thus exercising themselves in seeing 
in everything the worst that is, they none the less in- 
tend that others should continue believing in the good. 
They must needs, then, be heedless even to stuffing their 
ears, or until that noise of the rest of the world comes 
to wake them up with a start. The father lets his son go 
where so many others go, where Cato himself went ; he 
says that youth slips away. But, on returning, the son 
looks at his sister ; and see what an hour spent famil- 
iarly with brute reality produces in him ! it must be that 
he says to himself: “My sister is in no respect like that 
creature whom I have left ! ’ * and from that day see how 
restless he is. 

The curiosity of evil is an infamous malady that is 
born of every impure contact. It is the prowling in- 
stinct of ghosts that raises the stone from the tombs ; it 
is an inexplicable torture with which God punishes those 
who have failed ; they would like to believe that every- 
thing can fail, and they would perhaps be distressed 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 31 1 

thereat. But they inquire, they seek, dispute; they 
lean their heads to one side, like a builder who is ad- 
justing a square, and strive thus to see what they desire. 
The evil being proved, they smile at it ; the evil being 
doubtful, they would swear at it ; the good, they want 
to see behind. Who knows ? that is the great formula, 
the first word that Satan spoke when he saw heaven 
shut. Alas ! how many unhappy men have used this 
same expression! how many disasters and deaths, how 
many terrible sweeps with the scythe in harvests ready 
to bloom ! how many hearts, how many families in 
which there is no longer anything but ruins since that 
word has been heard there ! Who knows ? who knows ? 
an infamous expression ! Rather than pronounce it, 
one should do like sheep, who know not where the 
slaughter-house is and who go there browsing on grass. 
That is better than being a free-thinker and reading La 
Rochefoucauld. 

What better example could I give of it than what I 
am relating at this moment? My mistress wanted to 
start, and I had only to say a word. I saw her sad, 
and why did I remain ? what would have come of it if 
I had left? It would have been only a moment’s fear; 
we would not have traveled three days before all would 
have been forgotten. Alone with her, she would have 
thought only of me ; what mattered it to me to learn a 
mystery that did not attack my happiness? She con- 
sented, everything ended there. All that was necessary 


3 12 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


was a kiss on her lips ; instead of that, see what I am 
doing. 

One evening on which Smith had dined with us, I 
withdrew early and left them together. As I was 
closing my door, I heard Brigitte asking for tea. Next 
day, on entering her room, I approached the table by 
chance, and, beside the teapot, I saw only a single 
cup. No one had entered before me, and, conse- 
quently, the servant had carried nothing away of what 
had been made use of the evening before. I looked 
around me on the furniture to see whether I could 
find a second cup, and assured myself that there was 
none. 

“ Did Smith stay late?” I asked Brigitte. 

“ He remained until midnight.” 

“ Did you go to bed alone, or did you call some 
one to put you to bed? ” 

“I went to bed alone; everybody was asleep in the 
house.” 

I was still searching, and my hands were trembling. 
In what burlesque comedy is there a simpleton jealous 
enough to go and inquire what has become of a cup? 
In relation to what should Smith and Madame Pierson 
have drunk out of the same cup ? What a noble thought 
came to me in that ! 

I was holding the cup, however, and I was moving 
here and there through the room. I could not help 
breaking into laughter, and I hurled it on the floor. It 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


313 

was broken into a thousand pieces, which I crushed 
under my heel. 

Brigitte saw me doing this without saying a single 
word to me. During the two following days she treated 
me with a coldness that had the appearance of holding 
me in contempt, and I saw her affect towards Smith a 
freer and kindlier tone than ordinary. She called him 
Henri, his baptismal name, and smiled on him in a 
familiar way. 

“I am anxious to take an airing,” she said after 
dinner; “are you going to the Opera, Octave? I am 
in a mood to go there on foot.” 

“No, I stay here; go there without me.” 

She took Smith’s arm and left. I remained alone the 
whole evening ; I had paper before me, and I wanted 
to write so as to fix my thoughts, but I could not get 
myself down to it. 

As a lover, as soon as he sees himself alone, takes 
from his bosom a letter from his mistress and buries 
himself in a cherished dream, so I plunged with pleas- 
ure into the feeling of a profound solitude and I shut 
myself up in order to doubt. I had in front of me the 
two empty seats that Smith and Brigitte had just oc- 
cupied ; I looked at them with a greedy eye, as if they 
might be able to tell me something. I revolved a 
thousand times in my head what I had seen and heard ; 
from time to time I went to the door and cast my eyes 
on our trunks, which were arranged against the wall and 


3 I 4 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


which were waiting for a month past; I opened them 
gently, I examined the clothing, the books, arranged 
in order by those careful and delicate little hands ; I 
listened to the carriages passing; their noise made my 
heart palpitate. I spread out on the table our map of 
Europe, but lately the witness of such sweet projects; 
and there, in the very presence of all my hopes, in that 
room in which I had conceived them and seen them so 
near to being realized, I gave myself up with free heart 
to the most frightful presentiments. 

How was that possible ? I felt neither wrath nor jeal- 
ousy, and yet an unbounded sorrow. I did not suspect, 
and yet I doubted. So odd is man’s mind that he 
knows how to forge for himself, with what he sees and 
in spite of what he sees, a hundred subjects of suffering. 
In truth, his brain resembles those cells of the Inquisi- 
tion in which the walls are covered with so many instru- 
ments of torture that one understands neither their 
object nor their form, and that one asks, on seeing them, 
if they are pincers or playthings. Tell me, I ask you, 
what difference there is between one saying to his mis- 
tress : “All women deceive,” and saying to her: “You 
are deceiving me?” 

What was passing through my head was, however, 
perhaps as subtle as the finest sophism ; it was a sort 
of dialogue between mind and conscience. “ If I lost 
Brigitte?” said the mind. — “She is going away with 
you,” said the conscience. — “If she was deceiving 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


3 I 5 


me?” — “How would she deceive you, she who had 
made her will, in which she recommended that prayers 
be said for you!” — “If Smith loved her?” — “Mad- 
man, what matters it to you, since you know that it 
is you whom she loves?” — “If she loves me, why 
is she sad?” — “That is her secret, respect it.” — “If 
I take her away, will she be happy?” — “Love her, 
she will be so.” — “Why, when that man looks at her, 
does she seem afraid to meet his eyes?” — “Because 
she is a woman and because he is young.” — “Why 
does that man, when she looks at him, turn pale all 
of a sudden?” — “Because he is a man and because 
she is pretty.” — “Why, when I went to see him, did 
he throw himself weeping into my arms? why, one 
day, did he strike his brow?” — “Do not ask what it 
is necessary that you be ignorant of.” — “Why is it 
necessary that I be ignorant of these things?” — “Be- 
cause you are wretched and fragile, and because every 
mystery is God’s.” — “But why is it that I suffer, why 
cannot I think of that without my soul being terri- 
fied?” — “Think of your father and do good.” — “But 
why can I not do it ? why does evil attract me to it ? ” — 
“Get down on your knees and make your confession; 
if you believe in evil, you have done it.” — “If I have 
done it, was it my fault? why did goodness betray 
me?” — “Because you are in darkness, is that a reason 
for denying light ? if there are traitors, why are you one 
of them?”— “Because I am afraid of being duped.”— 


3 l6 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


“ Why do you spend your nights awake ? The new-born 
are asleep at that hour. Why are you alone now? ” — 
“Because I am thinking, I am doubting, and I am 
afraid.” — “ When, then, will you make your prayer? ” — 
“ When I shall believe. Why have they lied to me? ’ ’ — 
“Why do you lie, you coward! at this very moment? 
Why do you not die if you cannot suffer?” 

Thus spoke and groaned in me two terrible and con- 
trary voices, and a third still called out: “Alas! alas! 
my innocence ! alas ! alas ! the days of old ! ” 


v 


What a frightful lever is human thought ! it is our 
defence and our safeguard, the finest present that God 
has made to us. It is ours and obeys us ; we can hurl it 
into space, and, once outside this weak cranium, we have 
done with it, we are no longer answerable for it. 

As long as I was, from day to day, continually putting 
off that departure, I was losing strength and sleep, and 
little by little, without my noticing it, all my life was 
abandoning me. When I sat down at table, I felt in 
me a mortal disgust ; at night, those two pale counten- 
ances, that of Smith and that of Brigitte, which I was 
watching as long as day lasted, followed me into fright- 
ful dreams. When they went in the evening to the 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


317 


theatre, I refused to go there with them ; then I betook 
myself thither on my own account, I concealed myself 
in the pit, and thence I looked at them. I feigned to 
have business in the adjoining room and I stayed there 
an hour to listen to them. Sometimes the idea of pick- 
ing a quarrel with Smith and of forcing him to fight 
me, laid violent hold of me ; I turned my back to him 
while he was speaking to me ; then I saw him with an 
air of surprise coming to me and offering me his hand. 
Sometimes, when I was alone at night and when every 
one was asleep in the house, I felt myself tempted to go 
to Brigitte’s secretary and to take her papers from it. 
Once I was obliged to go out so as to resist it. What 
can I say ? One day, with a knife in my hand, I wished 
to threaten to kill them if they did not tell me the reason 
of their sadness ; another day, it was against myself that 
I wanted to turn my rage. With what shame I write it ! 
And should any one have asked me for the cause of my 
acting thus, I should not have known what answer to 
give. 

To see, to know, to doubt, to spy, to be restless and 
to make myself miserable, to spend the day with my ear 
on the alert, and the night bathed in tears, to repeat to 
myself that I was dying of grief and to believe that I 
had cause for it, to feel isolation and weakness tearing 
up hope by the roots from my heart, to imagine that I 
was spying, while I was listening in the shade only to 
the beating of my feverish pulse ; unendingly to go over 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


3 l8 

those insipid phrases that are current everywhere : 
“Life is a dream, there is nothing stable here below;” 
in fine, to curse, to blaspheme God in me, by my 
wretchedness and my caprice : that is what my enjoy- 
ment was, the dear occupation for which I gave up love, 
the air of heaven, liberty ! 

Eternal God, liberty ! yes, there were certain mo- 
ments when, in spite of everything, I still thought of it. 
In the midst of so much madness, oddity, and stupidity, 
there were boundings in me that all of a sudden took me 
away from myself. It was a gust of air that struck 
against my face when I went out of my cell; it was a 
page of a book that I was reading, when, however, it 
happened to me to take up others than those of these 
modern sycophants whom people call pamphleteers, and 
against whom people ought to be on their guard, as a 
mere measure of public safety, to tear to pieces and to 
treat as philosophasters. Since I am speaking of those 
good moments that were so rare, I want to mention 
one of them. One evening I was reading Constant’s 
memoirs ; I found in them the following ten lines : 

“ Salsdorf, a Saxon surgeon attached to Prince Chris- 
tian, had his limb broken by a shell at the battle of 
Wagram. He was lying in the dust almost lifeless. 
Fifteen paces away from him Amadeus of Kerburg, 
aide-de-camp — I have forgotten to whom — bruised in 
the breast by a bullet, falls and vomits blood. Salsdorf 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 319 

sees that, if succor is not brought to this young man, he 
is going to die of apoplexy ; he gathers up his strength, 
drags himself crawling to him, bleeds him, and saves 
his life. On leaving there, Salsdorf dies at Vienna, four 
days after the amputation.” 

When I read these words, I threw down the book 
and melted into tears. I do not regret them, they were 
worth a good day to me ; for I did nothing but speak 
of Salsdorf, and cared for nothing else whatever. I did 
not think, for a certainty, of suspecting any one that 
day. Poor dreamer ! should I then remember that I 
had been good? Of what service was that to me? to 
stretch out desolate arms towards Heaven, to ask myself 
why I was in the world and to look around me to see 
whether some shell would not also fall that would free 
me for eternity. Alas ! it was only the lightning flash 
that crossed through my night for an instant. 

Like those mad dervishes who find ecstasy in vertigo, 
when thought, turning on itself, has become exhausted 
from digging into itself, weary of a useless toil, it stops 
in affright. It seems that man is empty, and that, by 
force of going down into himself, he reaches the last 
step of a spiral staircase. There, as on the mountain 
summits, as in the depths of mines, air is wanting, and 
God forbids him to go farther. Then, stricken with a 
mortal cold, the heart, as if affected by forgetfulness, 
would like to escape from its bondage in order to be 


3 2 ° 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


born again ; he asks life of what surrounds him, he 
breathes the air ardently ; but he finds around him only 
his own chimeras which he has just animated with the 
strength that is wanting to him, and which, created by 
him, surround him like pitiless spectres. 

It was not possible that matters should long continue 
thus. Worn out by uncertainty, I resolved to make a 
trial in order to discover the truth. 

I went to order post-horses for ten o’clock in the 
evening. We had hired a caleche, and I gave instruc- 
tions that everything be ready for the hour appointed. 
At the same time I forbade that anything be said of it 
to Madame Pierson. Smith came to dinner ; on taking 
my seat at table I affected more gayety than ordinarily, 
and, without signifying my intention to them, I turned 
the conversation on our journey. I would give it up, I 
said to Brigitte, if I thought that she had it less at heart ; 
I found myself so well at Paris that I did not ask better 
than to stay there as long as she found it agreeable. I 
bestowed praise on all the pleasures that one could have 
only in this city ; I spoke of balls, of the theatre, of so 
many opportunities for distraction that are there to be 
met with at every turn. In short, since we were happy, 
I did not see why we should change places ; and I did 
not dream of setting out so soon. 

I expected that she was going to insist on our plan of 
going to Geneva, and indeed she did not fail to do so. 
It was, however, but rather feebly ; but, as soon as she 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


3 21 


had said the first words about it, I feigned to yield to her 
insistence ; then, changing the conversation, I spoke of 
indifferent matters, as if everything had been agreed 
upon. 

“And why,” I added, “should not Smith come along 
with us ? It is quite true that he has occupations which 
keep him here; but can he not get a leave of absence? 
Moreover, should not the talents that he possesses, and 
of which he does not wish to take advantage, assure to 
him a free and honorable existence anywhere ? Let him 
come without ceremony ; the coach is large, and we offer 
him a place. It is necessary that a young man should see 
the world, and there is nothing so sad at his age as to 
be shut up in a narrow circle. Is it not true ? ” I asked 
Brigitte. “ Come, my dear, let your credit obtain from 
him what he would perhaps refuse to me ; persuade him 
to sacrifice six weeks of his time to us. We will travel 
together, and a tour in Switzerland with us will make 
him find more pleasure in his office and his work.” 

Brigitte joined with me, though she well knew that 
this invitation was only a pleasantry. Smith could not 
absent himself from Paris without danger of losing his 
place, and he answered us, not without regret, that this 
reason prevented him from accepting. However, I had 
a bottle of good wine brought up, and, while continuing 
to press him, half-laughingly, half-seriously, we were 
all three of us animated. After dinner, I went out for 
a quarter of an hour to make sure that my orders were 


3 22 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


carried out ; then I returned with a joyous air, and, 
sitting down at the piano, I proposed to have some 
music. “ Let us spend our evening here,” I said to 
them; “if you approve, let us not go to the theatre; 
I am not capable of aiding you, but I can listen to you. 
We will get Smith to play if he is bored, and the time 
will pass more quickly than elsewhere.” 

Brigitte did not require to be entreated, she sang with 
good grace ; Smith accompanied her with his violoncello. 
The ingredients to make punch had been brought, and 
ere long the flame of burning rum made us gay with its 
light. The piano was abandoned for the table; they 
returned to it ; we took up cards ; everything went on 
as I wanted, and it was a question only of diversion. 

I had my eyes fixed on the clock, and I was im- 
patiently waiting for the hand to mark ten. Restless- 
ness was devouring me, but I had the strength to let 
no sign of it escape. At last the moment fixed upon 
arrived : I heard the postilion’s whip and the horses 
entering the courtyard. Brigitte was seated near me ; I 
took hold of her hand and asked her if she was ready to 
leave. She looked at me in surprise, no doubt thinking 
that I was jesting. I said to her that at dinner she had 
appeared to me so clearly decided that I had not hesi- 
tated to have the horses brought, and that it was to order 
them that I had gone out. At the same instant the house- 
boy entered, coming to tell us that the packages were on 
the coach and that they were only waiting for us. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


323 


“Are you serious?” Brigitte asked; “you want to 
leave to-night ? ’ ’ 

“Why not,” I answered, “since we are agreed that 
we ought to leave Paris ? ’ ’ 

“ What ! now ? at this very instant?” 

“Undoubtedly; is it not a month since everything 
has been ready ? you see that they have only had the 
trouble of strapping our trunks on the caleche; from 
the moment it is decided that we do not remain here, is 
it not better to leave as soon as possible ? I am of the 
opinion that it is necessary to do everything thus and to 
defer nothing until to-morrow. You are this evening in 
a traveling mood, and I make haste to take advantage 
of it. Why wait and defer continually ? I could not 
bear this life. Is it not true that you want to leave? 
well, let us leave, it now only depends upon you.” 

There was a moment’s deep silence. Brigitte went 
to the window and saw that the horses were hitched. 
Moreover, from the tone in which I spoke, there could 
no longer remain any doubt, and, however prompt this 
resolve must have appeared to her, it was from her that 
it came. She could not unsay her own words or make 
a pretext of any motive for delay. Her determination 
was taken at once ; she first put some questions as if to 
make sure that everything was in order; seeing that 
nothing had been omitted, she looked about from side 
to side. She took her shawl and her hat, then put them 
on, then looked again. “ I am ready,” she said, “here 


3 2 4 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


I am; we' are leaving, then? we are going to start?” 
She took a light, visited my room, her own, and opened 
the boxes and the wardrobes. She asked for the key 
of her secretary which she had lost, she said. Where 
could that key be? She had it an hour ago. “Come, 
come, I am ready,” she repeated with extreme agita- 
tion; “let us leave, Octave, let us go down.” While 
saying that she was still looking and came and sat down 
beside us. 

I had remained on the lounge and was looking at 
Smith standing in front of me. He had not changed 
countenance, and seemed neither troubled nor surprised ; 
but two drops of perspiration were running down his- 
temples, and I heard an ivory counter which he was 
holding, crack between his fingers, and the pieces fall 
to the floor. He extended both his hands to us at 
the same time. “A pleasant journey, my friends! ” he 
said. 

Renewed silence; I was ever observing him, and I 
was waiting for him to add a word. “ If there is a 
secret here,” I thought, “when shall I know it, if not 
at this moment ? They must both of them have it on 
their lips. Let but the shadow of it appear, and I will 
seize it.” 

“My dear Octave,” said Brigitte, “where do you 
expect that we shall stay? You will write to us, Henri, 
will you not ? you will not forget my family, and you 
will do whatever you can for me?” 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 325 

He answered with emotion, but with apparent calm, 
that he pledged himself with all his heart to serve her 
and that he would exert his efforts to do so. “I cannot 
answer for anything,” he said, “and regarding the letters 
that you have received, there is very little hope. But it 
will not be my fault if, in spite of everything, I cannot 
soon send you some good news. Count on me, I am 
devoted to you.” 

After having further addressed a few obliging words 
to us, he got ready to leave. I arose and went ahead 
of him ; I wanted for the last time to leave them for 
another moment together, and as soon as I had closed 
- the door behind me, in all the rage of baffled jealousy, 
I pressed my brow against the lock. 

“ When shall I see you again ? ” he asked. 

“Never,” Brigitte replied; “adieu, Henri.” She 
extended her hand to him. He leaned down, raised it 
to his lips, and I had only time to throw myself back 
into the darkness. He passed out without seeing me 
and left. 

Left alone with Brigitte, I felt my heart desolate. 
She was waiting for me, her cloak under her arm, and 
the emotion which she felt was too obvious to be mis- 
taken about it. She had found the key which she was 
looking for, and her secretary was open. I returned and 
sat down beside the fireplace. 

“Listen,” I said, without daring to look at her; “I 
have been so guilty towards you that I ought to wait 


326 THE CONFESSION OF A 

and suffer without having the right to complain. The 
change that has taken place in you has cast me into such 
despair that I have not been able to keep from asking 
you the reason for it ; but to-day I no longer ask it of 
you. Does it pain you to leave? tell me; I will be 
resigned. ’ ’ 

“ Let us start ; let us start ! ” she replied. 

“As you will; but be frank. Whatever be the blow 
that I receive, I must not even ask whence it comes ; I 
will submit to it without a murmur. But if I must ever 
lose you, do not give me back hope ; for, God knows ! 
I should not survive it.” 

She turned around precipitately. “Speak to me,” 
she said, “of your love, do not speak to me of your 
sorrow.” 

“Well, I love you more than my life! Compared 
with my love, my sorrow is only a dream. Come with 
me to the end of the world, either I will die, or I will 
live by you ! * *- 

While pronouncing these words I took a step towards 
her and I saw her grow pale and recoil. She made a 
vain effort to force her contracted lips to smile; and, 
stooping down over the secretary: “An instant,” she 
said, “an instant more; I have some papers to burn.” 

She showed me the letters from N , tore them up 

and threw them into the fire; she took others, which 
she reread and which she spread out on the table. They 
were bills from her dealers, and there were some of them 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


3 2 7 


in the number that had not yet been paid. While ex- 
amining them, she began to speak with volubility, her 
cheeks burning as in a fever. She asked pardon of me 
for her obstinate silence and for her conduct since her 
arrival. She showed me more tenderness, more con- 
fidence than ever. She clapped her hands, laughing, 
and promised herself the most charming journey; in 
fine, she was all love, or at least all semblance of love. 
I cannot say how much I was suffering from that facti- 
tious joy ; there was in that sorrow which was thus bely- 
ing itself, a sadness more frightful than tears and more 
bitter than reproaches. I should have preferred her 
cold and indifferent rather than thus excitedly striving 
to conquer herself ; it seemed to me that I beheld a 
travesty of our most happy moments. It was the same 
words, the same woman, the same caresses; and that 
which, only a fortnight previously, was intoxicating me 
with love and with happiness, thus repeated, gave me 
horror. 

“ Brigitte,” I said to her all of a sudden, “what 
mystery, then, are you concealing from me? If you 
love me, what horrible comedy, then, are you thus 
playing before me?” 

“ I ! ” she said, almost offended. “ What makes you 
believe that I am acting a part ? ’ ’ 

“ What makes me believe it ? Tell me, my dear, that 
you have death in your soul and that you are suffering 
martyrdom. Behold my arms ready to receive you; 


328 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


rest your head there and weep. Then I will take you 
away, perhaps; but in truth, not thus.” 

“ Let us start, let us start ! ” she repeated again. 

“ No, on my soul ! no, not at present, no, so long as 
there is a lie or a mask between us. I prefer misfortune 
to that gayety.” She remained mute, in consternation 
at seeing that I was not deceived by her words and that 
I saw through her in spite of her efforts. 

“Why deceive ourselves?” I continued. “Have I, 
then, fallen so low in your estimation that you can feign 
in my presence ? This unfortunate and sad journey you 
believe yourself, then, condemned to ? Am I a tyrant, 
an absolute master ? am I an executioner who is dragging 
you to punishment ? What, then, do you fear from my 
wrath, that you have recourse to such subterfuges? 
What terror makes you lie so ? ” 

“You are wrong,” she replied; “I entreat you, not 
a word more. ’ ’ 

" Why, then, so little sincerity? If I am not your 
confidant, can I not at least be treated as a friend ? if I 
cannot know whence come your tears, can I not at least 
see them flow ? Have you not even that confidence 
of believing that I respect your sorrows? What have I 
done to be left in ignorance of them ? could not some 
remedy be found there ? ’ ’ 

“No,” she said, “you are wrong; you would work 
your own misfortune and mine if you pressed me further. 
Is it not enough that we start ? ’ ’ 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


3 2 9 


“And how would you have me set out when it suffices 
to look at you in order to see that this journey is re- 
pugnant to you, that you go unwillingly, that you are 
already repenting of it ? What is it, then, great God ! 
and what are you concealing from me ? What is the 
use of playing with words, when the thought is as clear 
as that glass there ? Should I not be the lowest of men 
to accept thus, without a murmur, what you are giving 
to me with so much regret? Yet how should I refuse 
it ? what can I do if you do not speak ? ’ ’ 

“ No, I am not following you against my inclinations; 
you are mistaken ; I love you, Octave ; cease to torment 
me thus.” 

She put so much sweetness into her words that I threw 
myself at her knees. Who could have resisted her look 
and the divine character of her voice? “My God ! ” 
I exclaimed, “you love me, Brigitte? my dear mistress, 
you love me?” 

“Yes, I love you, yes, I belong to you; do with me 
as you will. I will follow you; let us go off together; 
come, Octave, they are waiting for us.” She clasped 
my hand in both hers and gave me a kiss on the fore- 
head. “Yes, it must be so,” she murmured; “yes, I 
mean it, even to the last breath.” 

“ It must be so ?" I said to myself. I arose. There 
remained on the table but a single sheet of paper which 
Brigitte was glancing over. She took it up, turned it 
over, then let it fall to the floor. “ Is that all? ” I asked. 


330 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


“ Yes, that is all.” 

When I had had the horses brought, it had not been 
with the thought that we should indeed set out. I 
wanted only to make a trial ; but, by the very force of 
the circumstances, it had become a reality. I opened 
the door. “It must be so!” I said to myself; “it 
must be so ! ” I repeated quite loud. “ What does this 
expression mean, Brigitte? what is there here, then, of 
which I am ignorant? Explain yourself; if not, I stay. 
Why must it be that you love me?” 

She fell on the lounge and wrung her hands in 
sorrow. “Ah! unfortunate, unfortunate man!” she 
said, “you will never know how to love!” 

“Well, perhaps, yes, I believe so; but, before God, 
I know how to suffer. It is necessary that you love me, 
is it not? well, it needs be also that you answer me. 
Even should I have to lose you forever, even should these 
walls crumble over my head, I will not leave here until 
I know what this mystery is which has been torturing 
me for a month past. You shall speak, or I leave you. 
Let me be a fool, a madman, let me spoil my life at 
will, let me ask you what perhaps I ought to feign to 
want to be ignorant of, let an explanation between us 
destroy our happiness and raise henceforward before me 
an insurmountable barrier, let me in that way make 
impossible this very departure which I have so much 
wished; whatever it may cost you and me, you shall 
speak, or I give up everything. ’ ’ 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 331 

“No, no, I will not speak.” 

“You shall speak ! Do you think, perchance, that I 
am a dupe of your lying? When I see you from even- 
ing until the next day more different from yourself than 
day is from night, do you think, then, that I am de- 
ceived about it ? When you give me as a reason some 
letters that are not worth merely the trouble of read- 
ing, do you imagine that I am satisfied with the first 
pretext that comes, because it pleases you not to look 
for another? Is your countenance of plaster, so that it 
is difficult to see on it what is passing in your heart? 
What opinion, then, have you of me ? I do not deceive 
myself so much as people think, and take care lest for 
want of words your silence does not tell me what you 
are so obstinately concealing.” 

“What do you mean that I am concealing from 
you?” 

“ What do I mean ! you ask me that ! Is it to brave 
me to my face that you put this question to me ? is it to 
drive me to extremes and to get rid of me? Yes, most 
certainly, offended pride is there, which is waiting for 
me to break out. If I explained myself frankly, you 
would have every feminine hypocrisy at your service ; 
you are waiting until I accuse you, in order to answer 
me that a woman like you does not condescend to justify 
herself. In what looks of disdainful pride do not the 
most guilty and the most perfidious know how to en- 
velop themselves ! Your great weapon is silence ; it is 


33 2 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


not of yesterday that I know it. You wish only to be 
insulted, you are silent until one comes to that ; come, 
come, struggle with my heart; where yours beats, you 
will find it; but do not struggle with my head, it is 
harder than iron and it holds out as long as you ! ’ ’ 

“ Poor boy! ” Brigitte murmured, “ you do not want 
to go, then ? ’ ’ 

“No! I leave only with my mistress, and you are 
not so now. I have struggled enough, I have suffered 
enough, I have tortured my heart sufficiently. It is time 
that day should dawn; I have lived enough in night. 
Yes, or no, will you answer?” 

“No.” 

“ As you please ; I will wait.” 

I went and sat down at the other end of the room, 
determined on getting up only when I had learned 
what I wanted to know. She appeared to reflect and 
walked haughtily in front of me. 

I followed her with a greedy eye, and the silence that 
she kept by degrees increased my wrath. I did not 
want her to notice it, and knew not what course to 
take. I opened the window. “ Let the horses be 
unharnessed,” I called, “and let them be paid for! I 
shall not leave this evening.” 

“Poor unhappy man!” said Brigitte. I quietly 
closed the window again and sat down without appear- 
ing to have heard her ; but I felt so keen an anger that 
I could not resist it. That cold silence, that negative 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


333 


force, were exasperating me to the last degree. I 
should have been really deceived and sure of the treason 
of a loved woman, had I felt nothing worse. As soon 
as I was myself condemned to still remain in Paris, I 
said to myself that at any price it was necessary for 
Brigitte to speak. In vain did I seek in my head for 
a way of obliging her to do so ; but, to find it at the 
very instant, I would have given all that I possessed. 
What was I to do ? what to say ? She was there, quiet, 
looking at me sadly. I heard the horses unharnessed; 
they went away at a slow trot, and the sound of their 
bells was soon lost in the streets. I had only to turn 
round for them to come back, and yet it seemed to me 
that their departure was irrevocable. I pushed the bolt 
of the door ; I do not know what said in my ear : 
“ There you are alone, face to face with the being who 
is to give you life or death.” 

Whilst, lost in my thoughts, I was trying to invent a 
course that would bring me back to the truth, I remem- 
bered a romance by Diderot, in which a woman, jealous 
of her lover, bethinks herself of a rather singular means 
to throw light on her doubts. She told him that she 
no longer loved him and announced to him that she 
was going to leave him. The Marquis des Arcis — that 
is the lover’s name — walks into the trap and acknowl- 
edges that he is himself weary of his love. This odd 
scene, which I had read when too young, had struck 
me as an artifice, and the memory that I had kept of it 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


334 

made me smile at that moment. “Who knows?” I 
said to myself, ' ‘ if I did likewise, Brigitte would, per- 
haps, be deceived thereby and would tell me what her 
secret is. ’ * 

From furious wrath, I passed all of a sudden to ideas 
of trickery and knavery. Was it, then, so difficult to 
make a woman speak in spite of herself? That woman 
was my mistress ; I was quite weak if I did not succeed 
in it. I threw myself on the sofa with a free and indif- 
ferent air. “Well, my dear,” I said pleasantly, “we 
are not, then, at the day of confidences.” 

She looked at me with an air of astonishment. 

“Well! my God, yes,” I continued, “it must be, 
however, that some day or other we shall reach a mutual 
understanding. See, to set you the example, I have 
some desire to begin ; that will make you confident, 
and there is nothing like an understanding between 
friends.” 

Undoubtedly, in speaking thus, my countenance 
betrayed me; Brigitte did not seem to hear me and 
continued walking. 

“Do you know, indeed,” I said to her, “that after 
all it is six months that we have been together ? The 
sort of life that we are leading has nothing that resem- 
bles that at which one may laugh. You are young, I 
am so likewise ; if it happened that the intimacy ceased 
to be to your taste, would you be woman enough to say 
so to me ? In truth, if that was so, I would acknowledge 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


335 


it to you frankly. And why not? is it a crime to love? 
it cannot, then, be a crime to love less, or to love no 
longer. What would there be astonishing at our age 
in desiring a change ? ’ ’ 

She stopped. “ At our age ! ” she said. “ Is it to me 
that you address yourself? What comedy are you also 
playing?” 

The blood mounted to my face. I seized her hand. 
“ Be seated there,” I said to her, “and listen to me.” 

“ What is the use? it is not you who are speaking.” 

I was ashamed of my own pretence, and I gave it up. 

“Listen to me!” I repeated emphatically, “and 
come, I entreat you, and sit down here beside me. If 
you want to keep silent, do me at least the favor of 
listening to me.” 

“Iam listening, what have you to say to me?” 

“ If any one said to me to-day : ‘ You are a dastard ! ’ 
I am twenty-two and I am already beaten ; my whole 
life, my heart would revolt. Would I not have in me 
the consciousness of what I am ? It would be neces- 
sary, however, to go out on the meadow, it would be 
necessary for me to face the first comer, it would be 
necessary to stake my life against his ; why ? To prove 
that I am not a dastard ; without which the world would 
believe him. This single word requires this response, 
every time that one has pronounced it and no matter 
who. ’ * 

“ It is true ; how far do you want to go with it ? ” 


33 6 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


“ Women do not fight ; but, as society is constituted, 
there is, however, no being, of either sex, who ought 
not, at certain moments of life, were it regulated like 
a clock, solid as iron, see everything put to the test. 
Reflect ; whom do you see escape from this law ? some 
persons, perhaps ; but see what comes of it : if it is a 
man, dishonor ; if it is a woman, what ? forgetfulness. 
Every being who lives a true life ought on that very 
account to give proof that he lives. There is, then, 
for a woman, as well as for a man, an occasion on 
which she is attacked. If she is brave, she rises up, 
makes her presence known, and sits down. A stroke 
of a sword proves nothing for her. Not only is it 
necessary that she defend herself, but that she herself 
forge her weapons. People suspect her ; who ? an 
indifferent person? she can and ought to despise him. 
Is it her lover, does she love him, that lover? if 
she loves him, therein is her life, she cannot despise 
him.” 

“ Her only answer is silence.” 

“You are mistaken; the lover who suspects her, 
offends thereby against her whole life, I know it; what 
answers for her, is it not her tears, her past conduct, her 
devotedness and her patience? What will become of 
him if she be silent ? that her lover will lose her by his 
own fault and that time will justify her. Is not that 
your thought ? * ’ 

“ Perhaps ; silence above all.” 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


337 


“ Perhaps, do you say ? assuredly I shall lose you if 
you do not answer me ; my course is taken : I leave 
alone. ’ ’ 

44 Well, Octave ” 

“Well,” I exclaimed, “time, then, will justify you? 
Finish ; to that at least say yes or no.” 

“ Yes, I hope so.” 

“ You hope so ! that is what I entreat you to ask your- 
self sincerely. It is the last time, no doubt, that you 
will have the opportunity for it in my presence. You 
tell me that you love me, and I believe it. I suspect 
you ; you desire that I should go and that time should 
justify you? ” 

4 4 And of what do you suspect me?” 

44 1 did not want to tell you, for I see that it is useless. 
But, after all, wretchedness for wretchedness, at your 
leisure : I love that equally well. You are deceiving 
me ; you love another ; that is your secret and mine. * ’ 

44 Who, then ? ' 9 she asked. 

44 Smith.” 

She laid her hand on my lips and turned away. I 
could not say anything more about it ; we both of us 
remained pensive, our eyes fixed on the floor. 

44 Listen to me,” she said with effort. 44 1 have suf- 
fered much, and I call Heaven to witness that I would 
give my life for you. As long as there shall remain to 
me in the world the faintest glimmer of hope, I will be 
ready to suffer still ; but even should I have to excite 


33 s 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


your wrath anew by telling you that I am a woman, I 
am so, however, my love. It is not necessary to go too 
far ahead, nor farther than human strength. I will never 
answer for that. All that I can do in this instance is 
to go on my knees for the last time and to entreat you 
again to go away.” 

She bowed as she was saying these words. I arose. 

“ Quite mad,” I said bitterly, “ quite mad is he who, 
once in his life, wishes to obtain the truth from a woman ! 
He will obtain only contempt, and he deserves it indeed ! 
The truth ! he knows it who corrupts chambermaids or 
who glides to their pillow at the hour when they are 
talking in a dream. He knows it who becomes a woman 
himself and whom his baseness initiates into all that goes 
on in darkness ! But the man who asks for it frankly, 
he who opens a loyal hand to obtain that frightful alms, 
it is not he who will ever obtain it ! She is on her 
guard with him ; as the only answer she shrugs her 
shoulders, and, if he loses his patience, she arises in her 
virtue like an outraged vestal, and she lets fall from her 
lips the great feminine oracle, that suspicion destroys 
love and that one could not pardon that to which one 
cannot answer. Ah ! just God ! what fatigue ! when, 
then, will all that end ? ’ ’ 

“When you will,” she said in an icy tone ; “ I am as 
weary of it as you.” 

“On the very instant; I leave you forever, and may 
time, then, justify you ! Time ! time ! O cold lover ! 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


339 


remember this adieu. Time ! and your beauty, and your 
love, and happiness, where will they have gone ? Is it, 
then, without regret that you are thus losing me ? Ah ! 
no doubt, the day on which the jealous lover will know 
that he has been unjust, the day on which he will see the 
proofs, he will understand what heart he has wounded, 
is it not true? he will weep for his shame, he will no 
longer have either joy or sleep ; he will live only to re- 
member that he might have been able formerly to live 
happy. But on that day his proud mistress will grow 
pale, perhaps, at seeing herself avenged ; she will say to 
herself : ‘ If I had done it sooner ! ’ And believe me, 
if she had loved, pride will not console her.” 

I had wanted to speak calmly, but I was no longer 
master of myself : in my turn I was walking agitatedly. 
There are certain looks that are veritable sword-thrusts, 
they cross each other like iron ; it was such that Brigitte 
and I exchanged at that moment. I was looking at her 
as a prisoner looks at the door of a cell. To break the 
seal that she had on her lips and to force her to speak, 
I would have exposed my own life and hers.” 

“ Where are you going?” she asked, “what do you 
want me to say to you ? ’ ’ 

“ What you have in your heart. Are you not cruel 
enough to make me repeat it thus ? ’ ’ 

“And you, and you! ” she exclaimed, “are you not a 
hundred times more cruel ? Ah ! quite mad, you say, 
they who want to know the truth ! Fool, can I say in my 


340 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


turn, who can hope that one believes her ! You want to 
know my secret, and my secret is that I love you. Fool 
that I am ! you are looking for another. This pallor 
that comes to me from you, you accuse it, you interro- 
gate it. Fool ! I have wanted to suffer in silence, to 
devote my resignation to you ; I have wanted to conceal 
from you my tears; you spy them as witnesses of a 
crime. Fool ! I have desired to cross the seas, to exile 
myself from France with you, to go and die, far from 
all that has loved me, on that heart which doubts me. 
Fool ! I have believed that the truth had a look, an 
accent, that one divined it, that one respected it ! Ah ! 
when I think of it, the tears suffocate me. Why, if it 
should be thus, have drawn me on to a step which will 
forever disturb my rest? My brain is reeling, I know 
not where I am ! ’ ’ 

Weeping, she leaned on me. “Fool! fool!” she 
repeated in a heart-rending voice. 

“And what is it, then?” she continued; “how long 
will you persevere? What can I do with these suspi- 
cions that are incessantly springing up again, incessantly 
allayed? I must, you say, justify myself! For what? 
for going away, for loving, for dying, for despairing? 
and, if I affect a forced gayety, that very gayety offends 
you. I sacrifice everything to you in order to go away, 
and you will not have gone a league until you will look 
backwards. Everywhere, always, whatever I do, insult, 
wrath ! Ah ! dear child, if you knew what a mortal 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


341 


cold, what a suffering it is thus to see the simplest word 
of the heart received with doubt and sarcasm ! You 
will deprive yourself thereby of the only happiness that 
there is in the world : to love without reserve. In the 
hearts of those who love you, you will kill every delicate 
and elevated feeling ; you will at length believe in noth- 
ing save that which is most gross ; there will remain to 
you of love only what is visible and is touched by the 
finger. You are young, Octave, and you have yet a long 
life to travel ; you will have other mistresses. Yes, as 
you say, pride is a small matter, and it is not that which 
will console me ; but God grant that a tear from you 
may pay me one day for those that you are making me 
shed at this moment.” 

She arose. “Must it then be said? is it necessary, 
then, that you know it, that for six months past I have 
not gone to bed a single evening without repeating to 
myself that everything was useless and that you would 
never be cured ; that I have not got up a single morning 
without saying to myself that it was necessary to try 
again ; that you have not spoken a word without my 
feeling that I ought to leave you, and that you have not 
given me a caress without my feeling that I preferred to 
die ; that, day by day, minute by minute, ever between 
fear and hope, I have a thousand times tried to over- 
come either my love or my sorrow ; that, as soon as I 
opened my heart to you, you cast a mocking glance 
into the very depths of my being, and that, as soon as I 


342 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


shut it, it seemed to me that I felt a treasure which you 
alone could spend? Shall I relate to you those weak- 
nesses and all those mysteries that seem puerile to those 
who do not respect them ? that, when you left me in 
wrath, I shut myself up to reread your first letters ; that 
there is a beloved waltz that I have never played in vain 
when I felt too keenly the impatience of seeing you 
come? Ah! unhappy woman ! how dear all those hidden 
tears, all those follies so sweet to the weak, will cost you ! 
Weep now ; this very punishment, this sorrow has served 
to no purpose.” 

I wanted to interrupt her. “ Allow me, allow me,” 
she said ; “a day must come when I must speak to you 
thus. Let us see, why do you doubt me? For six 
months past, in thought, in word, and in soul, I have 
belonged only to you. Of what do you dare to suspect 
me? Do you want to set out for Switzerland? I am 
ready, as you see. Is it a rival that you think you have ? 
send him a letter that I will sign and that you will take 
to the post-office. What are we doing ? where are we 
going? let us make a decision. Are we not always 
together? Well, why do you leave me? I cannot be 
at the same time near you and far from you. It should 
be, you say, that one should trust in one’s mistress, and 
that is true. Either love is a good, or it is an evil : if it 
is a good, it is necessary to believe in it; if it is an 
evil, it is necessary to be cured of it. All that, you see, 
is a game that we are playing ; but our heart and our 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


343 


life serve as a stake, and that is horrible ! Do you want 
to die ? that will be the sooner done. Who am I, then, 
that one doubts me?” 

She stopped in front of the glass. 

“ Who am I, then?” she repeated, “ who am I, then? 
Do you think of it ? Look, then, at this countenance. 

1 ‘ Doubt thee! ” she exclaimed, addressing her own 
reflection; ‘ 4 poor, pale head, they suspect thee! poor, 
thin cheeks, poor wearied eyes, they doubt you and your 
tears! Well, put an end to your suffering; may those 
kisses that have dried you, close your eyelids! Go 
down into that humid earth, poor vacillating body that 
no longer supports thyself ! When thou shalt be there, 
people will believe it, perhaps, if doubt believes in 
death. O sad spectre ! on what shore, then, wishest 
thou to wander and groan? what is that fire that is 
devouring thee ? Thou art making plans of travel, thou 
that hast a foot in the grave ! Die ! God is thy wit- 
ness that thou hast wished to love ! Ah ! what riches, 
what powers of love, one has awakened in thy heart ! 
Ah ! what a dream one has let thee enjoy, and with 
what poisons one has killed thee ! What evil hadst 
thou done that they threw thee into this ardent fever 
that is burning thee? What madness, then,, animates 
him, that enraged creature who is driving thee with 
his foot into the coffin, while his lips are speaking to 
thee of love ? What will become of thee, then, if thou 
still livest ? Is it not time ? is there not enough of it ? 


344 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


What proof of thy grief wilt thou give for one to 
believe in it, when as to thyself, poor living proof, 
poor witness, people do not believe thee? To what 
torture dost thou want to subject thyself, that thou hast 
not already used ? By what torments, what sacrifices, 
wilt thou appease greedy, insatiable love? Thou wilt 
be only an object of laughter ; thou wilt seek in vain 
for a deserted street in which those who pass by will 
not point their finger at thee. Thou wilt lose all shame 
and even the appearance of that fragile virtue that has 
been so dear to thee ; and the man for whom thou hast 
degraded thyself will be the first to punish thee for it. 
He will reproach thee for living for him alone, for 
braving the world for him, and, whilst thine own 
friends will murmur around thee, he will seek in their 
looks whether he does not perceive too much pity ; he 
will accuse thee of deceiving him, if a hand ever presses 
thine, and if, in the desert of thy life, thou perchance 
findest any one who can bewail thee in passing. O God ! 
does he remember one summer day on which they placed 
on thy head a crown of white roses ? Was it that brow 
that wore them ? Ah ! this hand which hung it on the 
oratory walls, has not fallen into dust like it ! O my 
valley ! O my old aunt, who now sleepest in peace ! 
O my lindens, my little white goat, my good farmers 
who loved me so much ! do you remember having seen 
me so happy, proud, tranquil, and respected? Who, 
then, threw in my way this stranger who wants to 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


345 


snatch me from them ? who, then, gave him the right 
to pass along my village path ? Ah ! unhappy one ! 
why didst thou turn around the first day that he fol- 
lowed thee there ? why didst thou receive him as a 
brother? why didst thou open the door and extend 
thy hand to him? Octave, Octave, why hast thou 
loved me, if all was to end thus ? ’ ’ 

She was near fainting, and I held her up until reach- 
ing an arm-chair, into which she fell with her head on 
my shoulder. The terrible effort she had just made in 
speaking to me so bitterly had crushed her. Instead 
of an outraged mistress, I suddenly found in her only 
a plaintive and suffering child. Her eyes were closed ; 
I threw my arms around her, and she remained motion- 
less. 

When she regained consciousness, she complained of 
extreme languor and entreated me in a tender voice to 
leave her so that she might go to bed. She could 
scarcely walk ; I carried her as far as the alcove and 
laid her down gently on her bed. There was in her 
no sign of suffering: she rested from her sorrow as 
from fatigue and did not seem to remember it. Her 
weak and delicate nature yielded without struggling, 
and, as she had said herself, I had gone farther than 
her strength. She held my hand in hers ; I embraced 
her ; our still loving lips were united, as it were, with- 
out our knowing it, and, on leaving a scene so cruel, she 
went to sleep on my heart, smiling as on the first day. 


346 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


VI 

Brigitte was asleep. Mute, motionless, I was seated 
by her pillow. As a husbandman, after a storm, counts 
the ears of a devastated field, so I began to go down 
into myself and to sound the evil that I had done. 

I had no sooner thought of it than I deemed it irre- 
parable. Certain sufferings, by their very excess, warn 
us of their close, and the more shame and remorse I 
felt, the more I felt that, after such a scene, there 
remained nothing but to bid each other adieu. What- 
ever courage Brigitte might have, she had drunk to the 
very dregs the bitter cup of her sad love : if I did not 
wish to see her die, it was necessary that she should 
rest from it. It had often happened that she had 
made me cruel reproaches, and hitherto she had, per- 
haps, put more wrath into them than this time; but 
now, what she had said to me was no longer vain words 
dictated by offended pride, it was the truth which, re- 
pressed in the depths of her heart, had broken it, in 
order to leave it. The circumstances in which we 
found ourselves and my refusal to go away with her 
rendered, moreover, all hope impossible ; she would 
have liked to pardon, but she would not have had 
the strength for it. That very sleep, that passing death 
of a being who could suffer no more, gave enough 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


347 


evidence as to that; that silence, coming all of a sud- 
den, that sweetness which she had shown on return- 
ing so sadly to life, that pale countenance, and even 
that kiss, everything told me that all was over, and 
that whatever bond might unite us, I had broken it 
forever. Just as she was now sleeping, it was clear 
that at the first suffering which should come to her 
from me, she would sleep her eternal sleep. The clock 
struck, and I felt that the hour that had elapsed was 
bearing my life away with it. 

Not wishing to call any one, I had lit Brigitte’s lamp; 
I was looking at that weak glimmer, and my thoughts 
seemed to float in the shade like its uncertain rays. 

Whatever I could say or -do, never had the idea of 
losing Brigitte as yet presented itself to me. I had a 
hundred times wanted to leave her ; but who has loved 
in this world and does not know what comes of it ? It 
was only despair or emotions of wrath. As well as I 
knew that I was loved by her, I was quite sure of lov- 
ing her also ; the invincible necessity had, for the first 
time, just arisen between us two. I felt, as it were, a 
dull languor, in which I distinguished nothing clearly. 
I was crouched near the alcove, and, though I had seen 
from the first instant the whole extent of my misfortune, 
I did not feel its suffering. What my mind understood, 
my soul, weak and frightened, seemed to push away so 
as to see nothing of it. “Come,” I said to myself, 
“that is certain ; I have wished it and I have done it ; 


348 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


there is not the least doubt but that we can no longer 
live together ; I do not want to kill this woman, so I 
have no alternative but to leave her. See what is done, 
I will go away to-morrow.” And, while thus speaking 
to myself, I thought neither of my wrongs, nor of the 
past, nor of the future; I remembered neither Smith 
nor anything whatever at that moment ; I could not 
have said what had brought me there or what I had 
been doing for the past hour. I was looking at the 
walls of the room, and I believe that all that took up 
my attention was to find by what coach I would go 
away on the morrow. 

I remained a rather long time in this state of strange 
calm. As a man struck with a dagger feels at first only 
the cold of the iron, he still takes a few steps on his 
way, and, stupefied, his eyes wandering, he asks himself 
what is happening to him : but gradually the blood 
comes drop by drop, the wound opens and lets it flow ; 
the ground is stained with a dark purple, death comes ; 
the man, on its approach, shudders with horror and falls 
thunderstruck. Thus, apparently tranquil, I was listen- 
ing to misfortune coming; I repeated in a low voice 
what Brigitte had said to me, and I was arranging 
around her all that I knew from habit that they pre- 
pared for her for the night ; then I looked at her, next I 
went to the window and I remained there with my brow 
pressed to the panes face to face with a great dark and 
heavy sky; then I returned to the bedside. To leave 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


349 


to-morrow was my only thought, and gradually that 
word to leave became intelligible to me : “Ah ! God ! ” 
I suddenly exclaimed, “my poor mistress, I am losing 
you, and I have not known how to love you ! ’ ’ 

At these words I started, as if it had been another 
person who had pronounced them; they resounded in 
my whole being, as does a gust of wind on a tuned harp 
that it is going to break. In an instant two years of suf- 
fering passed through my heart, and after them, as their 
consequence and their final expression, the present laid 
hold of me. How shall I describe such a sorrow ? By 
a single word, perhaps, for those who have loved. I had 
taken hold of Brigitte’s hand, and, no doubt dreaming 
in her sleep, she had pronounced my name. 

I arose and walked through the room ; a torrent of 
tears flowed from my eyes. I extended my arms as if to 
lay hold of all that past that was escaping from me. “ Is 
it possible? ” I repeated ; “ what ! I am losing you? I 
can love only you. What ! you are going away? it is 
all over forever ? What ! you, my life, my adored mis- 
tress, you are flying from me, I shall not see you again ? 
Never, never ! ” I said aloud ; and, addressing Brigitte 
asleep, as if she had been able to hear me: “Never, 
never, do not count on it ; never will I consent to it ! 
and what is it, then? why so much pride? Is there no 
longer any means of making reparation for the offence 
that I have given to you ? I entreat you, let us search 
together. Have you not forgiven me a thousand times ? 


35 ° 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


But you love me, you could not leave, and courage will 
fail you. What do you want us to do, then ? * ’ 

A horrible, terrifying madness suddenly took posses- 
sion of me : I walked this way and that, speaking at 
random, seeking on the furniture some instrument of 
death. I fell at last on my knees and I struck my head 
against the bed. Brigitte moved, and I stopped at once. 

“If I woke her up! ” I said to myself, shuddering. 
“What are you doing, then, poor madman? Let her 
sleep until daylight; you have still one night to see 
her. * ’ 

I resumed my place ; I was so much afraid that 
Brigitte would awaken that I scarcely dared to breathe. 
My heart seemed to have stopped at the same time as 
my tears. I remained chilled with a cold that made me 
tremble, and as if to force myself to silence : “ Look at 
her,” I said to myself, “ look at her, that is still allowed 
to thee. ’ ’ 

I at last succeeded in calming myself, and I felt 
sweeter tears flowing slowly down my cheeks. To the 
madness that I had felt, tenderness succeeded. It 
seemed to me that a plaintive cry was rending the air; 

I leaned on the pillow and I looked at Brigitte, as if for 
the last time my good angel had told me to engrave in 
my soul the imprint of her cherished features ! 

How pale she was ! Her long pupils, surrounded by 
a bluish circle, still shone, moist with tears; her figure, 
formerly so slight, was crouched as if under a burden ; 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


351 


her cheek, haggard and ash-colored, rested on her spare 
hand, on her weak and trembling arm ; her brow seemed 
to bear the imprint of that diadem of blood-stained 
thorns with which resignation is crowned. I remem- 
bered the cabin. How young she was, six months ago ! 
how gay, free, careless she was! What had I done with 
all that? It seemed to me that an unknown voice re- 
peated to me an old romance which I had long since 
forgotten : 

“ Altra volta gieri biele, 

Blanch’ e rossa com’ un’ flore, 

Ma ora no. Non son piii biele, 

Consumatis dal’ amore.” 

It was the old romance of my first mistress, and this 
melancholy dialect to me seemed clear for the first time. 
I repeated it as if I had done nothing until then but 
preserve it in my memory without understanding it. 
Why had I learned it and why did I remember it ? She 
was there, my faded flower, ready to die, consumed by 
love. 

“Look at her,” I said to myself, sobbing; “look at 
her ! Think of those who complain that their mistresses 
do not love them ; thine loves thee, she has belonged to 
thee ; and thou art losing her, and hast not known how 
to love her.” 

But grief was too strong : I arose and walked again. 
“Yes,” I continued, “look at her; think of those 


35 2 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


whom weariness is devouring and who go their way to 
drag out afar off a sorrow that is not shared. The evils 
that thou art suffering, others have suffered, and nothing 
in thee has remained unique. Think of those who are 
living without mother, without relatives, without dog, 
without friends; of those who are seeking and do not 
find, of those who are weeping and whom people mock, 
of those who love and whom people contemn, of those 
who die and are forgotten. In thy presence, there, in 
that alcove, is resting a being whom nature had, per- 
haps, formed for thee. From the highest spheres of the 
intellect to the most impenetrable mysteries of matter 
and form, that soul and that body are thy brethren; for 
the past six months thy mouth has not spoken, thy 
heart has not beaten once, but a word, a heart-beat, has 
answered thee ; and that woman whom God sent thee, 
as He sends the dew to the grass, she will have done 
nothing but glide upon thy heart. That creature who, 
in the face of Heaven, had come with open arms to give 
thee her life and her soul, she will have vanished like a 
shadow, and there will not remain merely the trace of 
her appearance. Whilst thy lips were touching hers, 
whilst thine arms were clasped around her neck, whilst 
the angels of eternal love were interlacing thee as a 
single being with the blood-bonds of lust, you were 
farther from each other than two exiles at the two 
extremities of the earth, separated by the whole world. 
Look at her, and, above all, be silent. Thou hast 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


353 

still one night to see her if thy sobs do not awake 
her.” 

Gradually my brain was excited and ideas ever more 
and more sombre moved me and frightened me, an 
irresistible power dragged me on to go down into 
myself. 

To do evil ! such, then, was the role that Providence 
had imposed upon me ! I, do evil ! I to whom my con- 
science, in the midst of my very madness, said, how- 
ever, that I was good ! I whom a pitiless destiny was 
incessantly dragging on ever farther into an abyss and 
to whom, at the same time, a secret horror was inces- * 
santly showing the depth of that abyss into which I was 
falling ! I who everywhere, in spite of everything, had 
I committed a crime and shed the blood of those hands 
there, would have again repeated to myself that my 
heart was not guilty, that I was deceiving myself, that 
it was not I who was acting thus, but my destiny, my 
evil genius, I do not know what being who dwelt in 
mine, but which was not born there ! I, do evil ! For 
six months past I had performed this task : not a day 
had elapsed that I had not labored at that impious work, 
and I had at that very moment the proof of it before 
my eyes. The man who had loved Brigitte, who had 
offended her, then insulted, then abandoned her, left 
her to take her up again, filled with fears, besieged 
by suspicions, thrown at last on that bed of sorrow on 
which I saw her stretched, it was I ! I struck my heart 


354 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


and, on seeing her, I could not believe in it. I looked 
upon Brigitte; I touched her as if to make sure that I 
was not deceived by a dream. My poor countenance, 
which I perceived in the glass, looked at me with 
astonishment. What, then, was that creature that ap- 
peared to me under my features ? what, then, was that 
pitiless man who was blaspheming with my mouth and 
torturing with my hands ? Was it he whom my mother 
called Octave? was it he whom formerly, at fifteen, 
among the woods and in the meadows, I had seen in the 
clear fountains over which I leaned with a pure heart, 
pure as the crystal of their waters? 

I shut my eyes and I thought of the days of my child- 
hood. Like a ray of sunshine that pierced a cloud, a 
thousand memories passed through my heart. “ No,” 
I said to myself, “ I have not done that. All that sur- 
rounds me in this room is only an impossible dream. ’ ’ 
I recalled the time when I w*as ignorant, when I felt my 
heart open on my first steps in life. I remembered an old 
beggar who was sitting down on a stone bench in front 
of a farm-house door, and to whom they sometimes sent 
me, in the morning, after breakfast, to take the remains 
of our repast. I saw him reaching out his wrinkled 
hands, feeble and bent, blessing me as he smiled. I 
felt the morning wind glide over my temples, I know not 
what dew-like freshness fell from Heaven into my soul. 
Then all of a sudden I reopened my eyes, and I found 
again, by the glimmer of the lamp, the reality before me. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


355 


“And thou dost not believe thyself guilty?” I 
asked myself with horror. “O corrupt apprentice of 
yesterday ! because thou weepest, thou believest thyself 
innocent? what thou takest for the testimony of thy 
conscience is perhaps only remorse ; and what murderer 
does not experience it ? If thy virtue calls out to thee 
that she is suffering, who tells thee that it is not because 
she feels as if she were dying ? O wretched man ! those 
far-off voices that thou hearest groan in thy heart, thou 
believest that they are sobs ; it is perhaps only the cry of 
the sea-mew, the funereal bird of the storm, which the 
shipwreck is calling to it. Who has never related to 
thee the childhood of those who die covered with blood ? 
They also were good in their day ; they also lay their 
hands on their countenances to remember it sometimes. 
Thou doest evil and thou repentest of it ? Nero did, 
when he slew his mother. Who, then, has told thee that 
tears wash us ? 

“And indeed were it so, were it that a part of thy 
soul shall never belong to evil, what wilt thou do with 
the other which will belong to it? Thou wilt stroke 
with thy left hand the wounds that thy right hand will 
open ; thou wilt make a shroud of thy virtue to bury thy 
crimes in it ; thou wilt strike, and, like Brutus, thou wilt 
engrave Plato’s gabble on thy sword. As for the being 
who will open her arms to thee, thou wilt plunge into 
the bottom of her heart that boastful and already repent- 
ant weapon : thou wilt lead to the cemetery the remains 


35 6 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


of thy passion and thou wilt scatter on their tomb the 
leaves of the sterile flower of thy pity ; thou wilt say to 
those who will see thee: ‘What do you mean? they 
have taught me to kill, and remark how I am still weep- 
ing for it and how God had made me better. ’ Thou 
wilt speak of thy youth, thou wilt persuade thyself that 
Heaven ought to pardon thee, that thy misfortunes are 
involuntary, and thou wilt plead with thy nights of 
sleeplessness that they leave thee some little rest. 

“ But who knows? thou art still young. The more 
thou wilt trust in thy heart, the more thy pride will lead 
thee astray. Behold thee to-day in the presence of the 
first ruin that thou art going to leave on thy way. Let 
Brigitte die to-morrow, thou wilt weep over her coffin ; 
whither wilt thou go on leaving her? Thou wilt go 
away for three months, perhaps, and thou wilt take a 
journey into Italy ; thou wilt envelop thyself in thy 
cloak like an Englishman troubled with the spleen, and 
thou wilt say to thyself some fine morning, in the 
recesses of an inn, after drinking, that thy remorse is 
appeased and that it is time to forget in order to live 
again. Thou who beginnest to weep too late, beware 
lest, one day, thou weepest no more. Who knows ? let 
people come and banter thee about those sorrows thou 
believest thou hast felt ; one day, at the ball, let a 
pretty woman smile from pity when they shall tell her 
that thou rememberest a dead mistress; mightest thou 
not derive some glory and take pride all of a sudden 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


357 


in what is rending thy heart to-day ? When the pres- 
ent, which makes thee shudder and which thou darest 
not look in the face, shall have become the past, an 
old story, a confused memory, mightest thou not, per- 
chance, throw thyself some evening on thy chair, at a 
supper of debauchees, and relate, with a smile on thy 
lips, what thou hast seen with tears in thine eyes ? It is 
thus that one drinks every shame, it is thus that one 
walks here below. Thou hast begun by being good, 
thou art weak, and thou wilt be wicked. 

4 4 My poor friend,” I said to myself from the bottom 
of my heart, “ I have some counsel to give thee : it is, 
that I believe that it is necessary for thee to die. Whilst 
thou art good at this hour, profit by it to be no longer 
wicked ; whilst a woman whom thou lovest is there, 
dying, on that bed, and whilst thou feelest horror of 
thyself, extend thy hand over her breast; she is still 
living, it is enough; shut thine eyes and open them 
no more ; do not attend her funeral, lest to-morrow 
thou be not consoled for it ; give thyself a dagger-stab 
whilst the heart that thou bearest still loves the God 
who made it. Is it thy youth that stops thee ? and is 
what thou wilt spare the color of thy hair ? Never let 
it grow white if it is not white to-night. 

“ And besides, what dost thou mean to do in the 
world ? If thou leavest, whither dost thou go ? What 
dost thou hope for, if thou remainest ? Ah ! is it not 
that while looking at that woman it seems to thee that 


358 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


thou hast in thy heart a whole treasure still buried? Is 
it not that what thou art losing is less what was than 
what might have been, and that the worst of adieus is 
to feel that one has not said everything? That thou 
hadst spoken an hour ago ! While the hand was at 
that place, thou couldst still be happy. If thou suf- 
feredst, that thou hadst opened thy soul ! if thou lovedst, 
that thou hadst said so ! Behold thee, like the miser, 
dying of hunger on his treasure; thou hast shut the 
door, O miser; thou art debating with thyself behind 
thy bolts. Throw them back, then, they are solid ; it 
is thy hand that has forged them. O madman ! who 
hast desired and who hast possessed thy desire, thou 
hadst not thought of God ! Thou playedst with happi- 
ness as a child with a rattle, and thou didst not reflect 
how rare and fragile that was that thou heldest in thy 
hands ; thou didst disdain it, thou didst smile at it and 
thou didst put off enjoying it, and thou didst not count 
the prayers which thy good angel made during that time 
to preserve to thee that shadow of a day. Ah ! if there 
be one of them in Heaven that has ever watched over 
thee, where is he at this moment ? He is seated be- 
fore an organ ; his wings are half extended, his hands 
stretched over the ivory key-board; he commences an 
eternal hymn : the hymn of love and of immortal forget- 
fulness. But his knees are unsteady, his wings droop, his 
head droops like a broken reed ; the angel of death has 
touched his shoulder, he is disappearing in immensity ! 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


359 


“ And thou, it is at twenty-two that thou remainest 
alone upon the earth, when a noble and elevated love, 
when the strength of youth were going, perhaps, to 
make something of thee ! When after such long fits 
of weariness, of sorrows so smarting, so many acts of 
irresolution, a youth so dissipated, thou couldst see rise 
over thee a tranquil and pure day ; when thy life, de- 
voted to an adored being, might be filled with a new 
sap, it is at this moment that everything is spoiled and 
vanishes before thee ! Behold thee, no longer with 
vague desires, but with real regrets ; the heart no longer 
empty, but depopulated ! And thou hesitatest ? What 
art thou waiting for ? Since she wants no more of thy 
life, let thy life no longer count for anything. Since 
she is leaving thee, leave thou also. Let those who loved 
thy youth weep over thee ! they are not numerous. He 
who was mute beside Brigitte ought to remain mute for- 
ever ! Let him who passed over her heart at least keep 
a trace of it intact ! Oh ! God ! if thou wishest still 
to live, would it not be necessary to efface it? What 
other course would remain to thee, in order to preserve 
thy miserable breath, but to finish corrupting it? Yes, 
now, thy life is at this price. It would be necessary for 
thee, in order to bear it, not only to forget love, but to 
unlearn that it exists ; not only to renounce what has 
been good in thee, but to slay what still can be so ; for 
what wouldst thou do if thou didst remember it? Thou 
wouldst not take a step on earth, thou wouldst not laugh, 


3 6 ° 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


thou wouldst not weep, thou wouldst not give alms to the 
poor man, thou couldst not be good for a quarter of an 
hour without thy blood, flowing back to the heart, call- 
ing out to thee that God had made thee good so that 
Brigitte might be happy. Thy least actions would re- 
sound in thee, and, like sonorous echoes, would make 
thy misfortunes groan in it; everything that would 
move thy soul would awaken a regret there, and hope, 
that celestial messenger, that holy friend that invites us 
to live, would itself be changed for thee into an inex- 
orable phantom and would become the twin brother 
of the past ; all thy attempts to lay hold of anything 
would only yield a long repentance. When the homicide 
walks beneath the shadow, he holds his hands clasped 
on his breast, in dread of touching anything and that 
the walls may accuse him. It is thus that it would be 
necessary for thee to act ; choose for thy soul or for thy 
body : thou must slay one of the two. The memory of 
good sends thee to evil, make of thyself a corpse if 
thou dost not want to be thine own ghost. O child, 
child ! die honest ! let some one be able to weep on 
thy tomb ! ’ ’ 

I threw myself on the foot of the bed, full of a 
despair so frightful that my reason abandoned me and 
that I no longer knew where I was or what I was doing. 
Brigitte heaved a sigh, and, removing the sheet that 
covered her, as if oppressed with an irksome weight, she 
uncovered her white and naked bosom. 


IJart jfiftf) Chapter m 


/ had brought the knife that I was holding close to 
Brigitte's boso?n ,•***/ threw back the sheet to un- 
cover the heart , and I perceived between the two white 
breasts a small ebony crucifix. 

I drew back , struck with fear ; my ha7id opened and 
the weapon fell. 




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CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


3 61 


At this sight all my senses were deeply stirred. Was 
it sorrow or desire? I do not know. A horrible 
thought had made me shudder suddenly. “ What ! ” I 
said, “to leave that to another! to die, to go down 
into the earth, while that white breast will breathe the 
air of the firmament? Just God! another hand than 
mine on that fine and transparent skin ! another mouth 
on those lips and another love in that heart ! Another 
man here at this pillow ! Brigitte happy, living, adored, 
and I in the corner of a cemetery, falling into dust at 
the bottom of a grave ! How long ere she forgets 
me if to-morrow I no longer exist ? How many tears ? 
none, perhaps ! Not a friend, no one who approaches 
her, who does not say to her that my death is a blessing, 
who does not hurry to console her for it, who does not 
entreat her not to think of it any more ! If she weeps, 
they will distract her; if a reminder strikes her, they 
will set it aside; if her love survives me in her, they 
will cure her of it as of a poisoning ; and she herself, 
who on the first day will perhaps say that she wants to 
follow me, will turn away in a month so as not to see 
from afar the weeping willow that they will have planted 
on my grave ! Why should it be otherwise ? Whom 
does one regret when one is so beautiful ? She would 
like to die of grief, but that fine bosom would say 
to her that it needs to live and a mirror would per- 
suade her of it ; and the day on which the dried-up 
tears will make way for the first smile, who will not 


362 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


congratulate her, convalescent from her grief? Then, 
after a week’s silence, she will begin to endure people 
pronouncing my name in her presence, then she will 
speak of it herself while looking languishingly as if 
to say : ‘ Console me ; ’ then gradually she will have 
come to this: no longer to avoid my memory, but to 
speak no more of it, and she will open her windows, on 
fine spring mornings, when the birds sing in the dew ; 
then when she will become dreamy and when she will 
say: f I have loved! ’ who will be there, along- 

side of her? who will dare to answer her that it is 
necessary to love again ? Ah ! then I shall be there no 
longer ! Thou wilt listen to him, faithless one ! thou 
wilt bend, blushing, like a rose that is going to open, 
and thy beauty and thy youth will mount to thy brow. 
While saying that thy heart is closed, thou wilt let 
emerge from it that fresh aureola, each ray of which 
calls for a kiss. How much they wish to be loved, 
those who say that they love no longer ! And is it 
astonishing? Thou art a woman; that body, that ala- 
baster throat, thou knowest what they are worth, some 
one has told it to thee; when thou concealest them 
under thy dress, thou dost not believe, like virgins, 
that everybody resembles thee, and thou knowest the 
price of thy modesty. How can the woman who has 
been extolled resolve to be so no longer? does she 
believe herself alive if she remains in the shade and if 
there be silence around her beauty ? Her very beauty 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


363 

is the praise and the look of her lover. No, no, it 
must not be doubted ; he who has loved, no longer 
lives without love ; he who learns of a death, clings to 
life. Brigitte loves me, and would perhaps die of it ; 
I shall kill myself, and another will have her. 

“Another, another!” I repeated as I leaned over, 
resting on the bed, and my brow brushed her shoulder. 
“ Is she not a widow ? ” I thought ; “has she not already 
seen death? have not those delicate little hands cared 
for and buried? Her tears know how long they last, 
and the second last not so long. Ah ! God preserve 
me ! while she sleeps, what matters it if I slay her? If 
I woke her up now and if I told her that her hour had 
come and that we were going to die in a last kiss, she 
would accept. What matters it to me? Is it certain, 
then, that everything does not end there?” 

I had found a knife on the table and I was holding it 
in my hand. 

“Fear, cowardice, superstition! what do they know 
of it, those who say so. It is for the people and the 
ignorant that they speak to us of another life, but who 
believes in it in the bottom of his heart ? What guar- 
dian of our cemeteries has seen a dead man leave his 
tomb and go and knock at the priest’s door? It was of 
old that people saw ghosts ; the police forbade them in 
our civilized cities, and there no longer spring from the 
bosom of the earth but living persons buried in haste. 
Who could have made death mute if it had ever spoken ? 


364 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


Is it because processions have no longer the right to 
encumber our streets, that the celestial spirit allows itself 
to forget? To die, that is the end, the object. God 
has laid it down, men discuss it ; but each bears written 
on the brow : 1 Do what thou wilt, thou shalt die. ’ 

What would they say of it, if I killed Brigitte ? Neither 
she nor I would hear anything of it. There would be 

to-morrow in a newspaper that Octave de T had 

killed his mistress, and the day after one would no 
longer speak of it. Who would follow us in the last 
escort? No one who, on returning home, would not 
breakfast peacefully ; and we, stretched side by side in 
the heart of that mud of a day, the world might walk 
over us without the noise of their footsteps awaking us. 
Is it not true, my dearly beloved, is it not true that we 
should be well there ? It is a downy bed, the earth ; 
no suffering would reach us there; they would not 
gabble in the neighboring tombs, of our union before 
God ; our bones would embrace each other in peace and 
without pride : death is a consoler, and what it joins 
is not loosed. Why should oblivion frighten thee, 
poor body that is promised to it? Each hour that 
strikes draws thee to it, each step that thou takest, 
breaks the rung on which thou hast just supported thy- 
self; thou feedest only on dead bodies; the air of 
Heaven bears thee down and crushes thee, the earth that 
thou tramplest on draws thee to it by the soles of thy 
feet. Descend, descend ! why so much dread ? Is it a 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


365 


word that gives you horror? Say only : ‘We will live 
no more.’ Is there not in life a great fatigue from 
which it is sweet to rest ? How does it happen that one 
hesitates, if there be only the difference between a little 
sooner and a little later ? Matter is imperishable, and 
physicists, they tell us, infinitely torture the smallest 
grain of dust without ever being able to annihilate it. 
If matter be the property of chance, what evil does it 
do in changing tortures, since it cannot change masters? 
What matters to God the form that I have received and 
what livery is worn by my sorrow? Suffering lives in 
my cranium ; it belongs to me, I kill it ; but the skele- 
ton does not belong to me, and I give it back to Him 
who lent it to me : let a poet make of it a cup from 
which he will drink his new wine ! What reproach 
can I incur, and who would make that reproach to me ? 
What inflexible judge will come to tell me what I have 
abused? What does he know of it? Was he in me? 
If each creature has his task to perform, and if it is a 
crime to shirk it, what great culprits, then, are the chil- 
dren who die on the nurse’s bosom? why are those 
spared? For what would the lesson serve of accounts 
rendered after death? It would be necessary, indeed, 
that Heaven should be deserted in order that man be 
punished for having lived, for it is enough that he has to 
live, and I know not who has asked for it, if not Voltaire 
on his death-bed : worthy and last cry of powerlessness 
from a desperate old atheist. What is the use? why so 


366 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


many struggles? who, then, is above, who is looking at 
and who is pleased with so many agonies? who, then, 
makes merry and stands idle at that spectacle of a crea- 
tion ever nascent and ever moribund? to build, forsooth, 
and the grass grows ; to plant, and the thunder falls ; to 
march, and death calls : ‘ Hold ! ’; to weep, and the tears 
are dried ; to love, and the countenance is wrinkled ; to 
pray, to prostrate, to supplicate, and to extend the arms, 
and the harvests have not a blade of wheat the more ! 
Who is it, then, who has done so much for the pleasure 
of knowing all alone that what he has done is nothing ? 
The earth is dying. Herschel says that it is from cold : 
who, then, holds in his hand that drop of condensed 
vapor and looks at it drying up, as a fisherman does with 
a little sea-water, so as to get a grain of salt from it ? 
That great law of attraction which suspends the world 
in its place uses it and gnaws it in an endless desire ; 
each planet bears its own miseries while creaking on its 
axle ; they are called from one end of the heavens to the 
other, and, uneasy of rest, seek which will be the first 
to stop. God holds them in check; they assiduously 
and eternally accomplish their void and useless labor ; 
they turn, they suffer, they burn, they are extinguished 
and are lighted, they descend and remount, they follow 
one another and shun one another, they interlace like 
rings; they carry on their surface thousands of beings 
renewed incessantly; those beings are agitated, cross 
one another also, are pressed for an hour, some against 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


367 


the others, then fall, and others rise ; where life is want- 
ing, it hastens ; where the air feels the void, it precipi- 
tates itself ; not a disorder, everything is regulated, 
marked, written in lines of gold and in parabolas of fire, 
everything marches to the sound of the celestial music 
on pitiless paths and forever ; and all that is nothing ! 
And we, poor nameless dreams, pale and sorrowful 
appearances, imperceptible ephemera, we whom one 
animates with momentary breath, that death may 
exist, we exhaust ourselves with fatigue to prove to 
ourselves that we are playing a part and that some- 
thing indescribable takes notice of us. We hesitate 
to draw on our breast a little instrument of iron and 
to knock off our heads with a shrug of the shoulders ; 
it seems that if we kill ourselves, chaos is going to 
be re-established; we have written and drawn up the 
divine and human laws, and we are afraid of our cate- 
chisms; we suffer for thirty years without murmuring, 
and we believe that we are struggling; at last, suffer- 
ing is the stronger, we send a pinch of powder into the 
sanctuary of the intellect, and there grows a flower on 
our tomb.” 

As I finished these words, I had brought the knife 
that I was holding close to Brigitte’s bosom. I was no 
longer master of myself, and I do not know, in my 
delirium, what might have come of it ; I threw back the 
sheet to uncover the heart, and I perceived between the 
two white breasts a small ebony crucifix. 


3 68 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


I drew back, struck with fear ; my hand opened and 
the weapon fell. It was Brigitte’s aunt, who, on her 
death-bed, had given that little crucifix to her. I did 
not remember, however, having ever seen it on her ; no 
doubt, at the moment of leaving, she had hung it on 
her neck, as a relic preservative from the dangers of 
travel. I joined my hands all of a sudden and felt 
myself bend towards the floor. “Lord my God,” I 
said trembling, “ Lord my God, you were there ! ” 

Let those who do not believe in Christ read this page ; 
neither did I believe in Him. Neither as a child, nor 
at college, nor as a man, had I frequented the churches ; 
my religion, if I had one, had neither rite nor creed, 
and I believed only in a God without form, without 
worship, and without revelation. Poisoned, from ado- 
lescence, with all the writings of the last century, I had 
early sucked from them the sterile milk of impiety. 
Human pride, that God of the egoist, closed my mouth 
to prayer, while my frightened soul took refuge in the 
hope of nothingness. I was as if intoxicated and mad 
when I saw the Christ on Brigitte’s bosom ; but, though 
not believing in Him myself, I drew back, knowing that 
she believed in Him. It was not a vain terror that at 
that moment stopped my hand. Who saw me ? I was 
alone, at night. Was there thought of the prejudices 
of the world ? who prevented me from taking my eyes 
away from that piece of black wood ? I could throw it 
into the ashes, but it was my weapon that I threw there. 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


3 6 9 


Ah ! how I felt it in my very soul, and how I feel it 
even now ! what wretches are the men who have ever 
made a mockery of what can save a being ! What 
matter the name, the form, the belief? Is not all that 
is good sacred ? Why do people dare to touch God ? 

As at a beam of the sun the snow descends from the 
mountains, and from the glacier that menaced the 
heavens issues a stream which reaches the valley, so 
descended into my heart a spring that spread. Repent- 
ance is a pure incense; it was exhaled from all my 
suffering. Though I had almost committed a crime, as 
soon as my hand was disarmed, I felt my heart inno- 
cent. A single instant had given back to me calm, 
strength, and reason ; I advanced anew towards the 
alcove ; I leaned over my idol and I kissed her crucifix. 

“Sleep in peace,” I said to her, **‘God is watching 
over thee ! Whilst a dream was making thee smile, thou 
hast just escaped the greatest danger that thou hast run 
in thy life. But the hand that menaced thee will not do 
evil to any one ; I swear it by thy Christ, Himself, I will 
kill neither you nor myself! I am a fool, a madman, 
a child who believed himself a man. God be praised ! 
thou art young and living, and thou art beautiful, and 
thou wilt forget me. Thou wilt get well of the evil 
that I have done thee, if thou canst pardon it. Sleep 
in peace until daylight, Brigitte, and then decide our 
destiny; whatever be the sentence that thou pro- 
nouncest, I will submit to it without a murmur. And 


37 ° 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


Thou, Jesus, who hast saved her, forgive me, do not tell 
it to her. I was born in an impious age, and I have 
much to expiate. Poor Son of God whom people forget, 
they did not teach me to love Thee. I have never 
sought Thee in the temples ; but, thank Heaven, where 
I find Thee, I have not yet learned not to tremble. 
Once before dying I shall at least have kissed with my 
lips a heart that is full of Thee. Protect it as long as 
it may breathe ; remain there, holy safeguard ; remem- 
ber that an unhappy man has not dared to die of his 
grief on seeing Thee nailed to Thy cross ; an impious 
man Thou hast saved from evil ; if he had believed, 
Thou wouldst have consoled him. Pardon those who 
have made him an unbeliever, since Thou hast made 
him repentant ; pardon all those who blaspheme ; they 
have never seen Thee, no doubt, when they were in 
despair ! Human joys are mockeries, they pitilessly dis- 
dain ; O Christ ! the fortunate ones of this world think 
they never have need of Thee ! pardon : when their 
pride outrages Thee, their tears baptize them sooner or 
later ; pity them for believing themselves sheltered from 
storm and for having need of the severe lessons of mis- 
fortune, in order to come to Thee. Our wisdom and 
our skepticism are in our hands — the great playthings of 
children ; pardon us for dreaming that we are impious, 
Thou who didst smile on Golgotha. Of all our miseries 
of an hour, the worst is, for our vanities, that they try 
to forget Thee. But, Thou seest, they are only shadows 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


37i 


that a look from Thee banishes. Thyself, hast Thou 
not been a man ? It was sorrow that made Thee God ; 
it was an instrument of punishment that served Thee to 
ascend to Heaven and that bore Thee with open arms 
into the bosom of Thy glorious Father; and we, it is 
also sorrow that leads us to Thee, as it led Thee to Thy 
Father; we come only crowned with thorns to bow 
before Thy image ; we touch Thy bleeding feet only 
with blood-stained hands, and Thou hast suffered mar- 
tyrdom to be loved by the unfortunate. ’ ’ 

The first rays of dawn were beginning to appear ; 
everything was gradually awakening, and the air was 
filled with distant and confused noises. Weak and ex- 

•a 

hausted from fatigue, I was going to leave Brigitte so 
as to take a little rest. As I was going out, a dress 
thrown on an arm-chair slipped to the floor near me, 
and there fell from it a folded paper. I picked it up ; 
it was a letter, and I recognized Brigitte’s hand. The 
envelope was not sealed, and I opened it and read what 
follows : 


‘ ‘ December 23, 18 — 

“When you receive this letter, I shall be far from 
you, and perhaps you will never receive it. My destiny 
is bound up with that of a man to whom I have sacrificed 
everything ; for him, to live without me is impossible, 
and I am going to try and die for him. I love you ; 
adieu, pity us. ’ * 


372 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


I turned over the paper after having read it, and I 
saw on the address : 

“To Monsieur Henri Smith, at N , Poste Res- 

tante. ’ ’ 


VII 


Next day, at noon, in a fine December sun, a young 
man and a woman who were linked arm in arm crossed 
the Palais-Royal garden. They entered a jeweler’s 
shop, where they chose two rings that were alike, and, 
exchanging them with a smile, put one on each other’s 
finger. After a short walk they went to have breakfast 
at the Freres Provencaux , in one of those little upper 
rooms from which one discovers, in all its entirety, one 
of the most beautiful places in the world. There, shut 
up in familiar converse, when the waiter had retired, 
they were elbow to elbow at the window and gently 
pressed each other’s hands. The young man was in 
traveling costume; seeing the joy that appeared on his 
countenance, one would have taken him for a newly- 
married man showing for the first time to his young 
wife the life and pleasures of Paris. His gayety was 
sweet and calm as always is that of happiness. He 
who had experience would have recognized the child 


$art .ififtl) (Chapter UM 


An hour afterwards a post-chaise passed over a little 
hill , behind the Fontainebleau barrier. The young man 
was there alone ; he looked for a last time at his natal 
city in the^ distance and thanked God for having per- 
mitted that , of three beings who had suffered through 
his fault , but one remained unhappy. 








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CHILD OF THE CENTURY 373 

who becomes a man and whose more confident look 
begins to strengthen the heart. From time to time he 
contemplated the heavens, then returned to his love, 
and tears shone in his eyes ; but he let them flow down 
his cheeks and smiled without wiping them away. The 
woman was pale and pensive, she was looking only at 
her friend. There was on her features, as it were, a 
profound suffering which, without her making any efforts 
to conceal it, did not, however, resist the gayety that 
showed itself. When her companion smiled, she smiled 
also, but not all alone ; when he spoke, she answered him, 
and she ate what he served to her ; but there was in her 
a silence that seemed to live only at instants. By her 
languor and her indifference one clearly distinguished 
that softness of soul, that sleep of the weaker of two 
beings who love each other, and one of whom exists 
only in the other and is animated only by an echo. 
The young man was not deceived in that, and seemed 
proud and grateful for it ; but one saw by his very pride 
that his happiness was new to him. When the woman 
suddenly became sad and drooped her eyes towards the 
floor, he strove, in order to reassure her, to assume an 
open and resolute air ; but he could not always succeed 
in that, and was himself sometimes disturbed. That 
mingling of strength and weakness, of joy and sorrow, 
of trouble and serenity, would have been impossible to 
understand on the part of an indifferent spectator ; one 
could have believed them in turn the two happiest 


374 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


beings on earth and the most unhappy; but, being 
ignorant of their secret, one would have felt that they 
were suffering together, and, whatever was their mys- 
terious pain, one saw that they had put on their sorrows 
a seal more powerful than love itself, friendship. Whilst 
they were clasping each other’s hand, their looks re- 
mained chaste ; though they were alone, they spoke in 
a low voice. As if overwhelmed by their thoughts, they 
laid their brows one against the other, and their lips did 
not touch each other. They looked at each other with 
a tender and solemn air, like the weak who want to be 
good. When the clock struck one, the woman heaved 
a deep sigh, and, turning half around : 

“ Octave,” she said, “ if you were mistaken ! ” 

“No, my dear,” the young man replied, “be sure of 
it, I am not mistaken. It will be necessary for you to 
suffer a great deal, for a long time perhaps, and for me 
always ; but both of us will get cured of it : you by 
time, I by God.” 

“Octave, Octave,” the woman repeated, “are you 
sure of not being mistaken ? ” 

“ I do not believe, my dear Brigitte, that we could 
forget ourselves ; but I believe that at this moment we 
cannot yet forgive each other, and yet that is what is 
necessary at any price, even at never seeing each other 
again.” 

“Why should we not see each other again? Why 
one day You are so young ! ” 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


375 


She added with a smile : 

“ In your first love, we will see each other without 
danger. ’ ’ 

“No, my friend; for, know it well, I will never see 
you again without love. May he to whom I leave you, 
to whom I give you, be worthy of you ! Smith is brave, 
good, and honest ; but, whatever love you have for him, 
you see clearly that you still love me ; for, if I wished to 
remain or to take you away, you would consent to it.” 

“ That is true,” the woman repeated. 

“True? true?” replied the young man as he looked 
at her with his whole soul ; “ true, if I wished, you would 
come with me ? ’ ’ 

Then he continued tenderly : 

“For this reason it is necessary for us never to meet 
again. There are certain loves in life that upset the head, 
the senses, the mind, and the heart ; among all of them 
there is only one that does not trouble, that penetrates, 
and that one dies only with the being in whom it has 
taken root.” 

“ But you will write to me, however ? ” 

“Yes, at first for some time, for what I have to suffer 
is so severe that the absence of every habitual and loved 
form would kill me now. It is gradually and meas- 
uredly that, unknown to you, I have approached, not 
without fear, that I have become more familiar, that, in 

fine Let us not speak of the past. It is gradually 

that my letters will be more rare, until the day when 


37 6 


THE CONFESSION OF A 


they will cease. I will thus again go down the hill that 
I have climbed for a year past. There will be in that a 
great sorrow, and perhaps also some charm. When one 
stops, in the cemetery, in front of a fresh and verdant 
grave, on which are engraved two cherished names, one 
feels a sorrow full of mystery that makes the tears flow 
without bitterness ; it is thus that I sometimes want to 
remember having been alive. ’ ’ 

The woman, at these last words, threw herself into an 
arm-chair and sobbed. The young man melted into 
tears ; but he remained motionless and as if not wish- 
ing himself to notice her sorrow. When the tears had 
ceased, he approached his friend, took hold of her hand 
and kissed it. 

“Believe me,” he said, “to be loved by you, what- 
ever be the name that the place bears which one occu- 
pies in your heart, that gives strength and courage. 
Never doubt it, my Brigitte, no one will understand you 
better than I ; another will love you more worthily, no 
one will love you more deeply. Another will respect 
in you qualities that I offend, he will surround you with 
his love ; you will have a better lover, you will not 
have a better brother. Give me your hand, and let the 
world laugh at a sublime word that it does not under- 
stand : ‘ Let us remain friends, and adieu forever. ’ 
When for the first time we clasped each other in our 
arms, a long time had already elapsed since something 
of ourselves knew that we were going to be united. Let 


CHILD OF THE CENTURY 


377 


not this part, which has embraced before God, know 
that we are leaving each other on earth ; let a miserable 
quarrel of an hour not unbind our eternal happiness ! ” 

He was holding the woman’s hand ; she arose, still 
bathed in tears ; and, advancing in front of the glass 
with a strange smile, she drew out her scissors and cut 
from her head a long tress of hair ; then she looked at 
herself for a moment, thus disfigured and deprived of a 
part of her most beautiful decking, and gave it to her 
lover. 

The clock struck again ; it was time to go down ; when 
they again passed under the galleries, they appeared as 
joyous as when they had arrived. 

“ This is a beautiful sun,” said the young man. 

“And a beautiful day,” said Brigitte, “which nothing 
will efface from there ! ’ ’ 

She struck her heart energetically ; they hurried on and 
disappeared in the crowd. An hour later a post-chaise 
passed over a little hill, behind the Fontainebleau barrier. 
The young man was there alone ; he looked for a last 
time at his natal city in the distance and thanked God 
for having permitted that, of three beings who had suf- 
fered through his fault, but one remained unhappy. 


NOTES 

1 The cemetery for executed criminals. 

2 Formerly I was beautiful, white and red as a flower, but now, 
no. I am no longer beautiful, consumed with love. 










LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


THE CONFESSION OF A CHILD OF THE 

CENTURY 


PAGE 

IN Brigitte’s oratory Fronts. 

SUPPER AFTER THE MASQUERADE 32 

A TAVERN ACQUAINTANCE 80 

DESGENAIS’S OFFERING 1 12 

SUPPER AT DESGENAIS’S 1 36 

OCTAVE AT HIS FATHER’S DEATHBED 1 52 

A DECLARATION OF LOVE 200 

HALTING FOR THE NIGHT 248 

THE CRUCIFIX 360 

THE DEPARTURE 372 


379 







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4 






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